Tag: patterns

A Pattern without Abuse.

“Two wrongs don’t make it right…” came to mind yesterday and I can see clearly how a child gets so lost after being abused, how the negative energies keep piling up.

‘Good’ folks who are unaware of what their actions are saying to the child make matters worse and don’t even know it, know it. They just are doing what their parents did unquestioning.

The cycle repeats itself, by each generations same behavior.

Yesterday while listening to a novel on CD, a sentence was spoken with awe, “She sure is her mother’s daughter…” and I thought sadly I am not, and felt sad pride.

It was bittersweet to know that I didn’t have a mother who acted like me, that I have forged this new behavior alone without a pattern to follow.

Not only no pattern, but I created this with no support from my family of origin…

The patterns of abuse were not followed by m me, nor did I act according to family’s wishes, instead I did the complete opposite and it has brought me much disdain.

Here is how I built a new pattern, I responded negatively to the abusers and I did what was positive for me.

This wasn’t a preconceived agenda, but rather an instinctual deep inside calling.

I was not a child at the time of being aware of my abuse, but I still mothered myself.

I was the mother and I was the wounded child.

In each situation I would ask myself what would be best for the abused little girl inside of me, and each time I would then respond that way, paying no heed to the ramifications that decision would cause to the folks around me.

My little girl inside was my number one focus and I never, not once did something that I felt would cause her more harm.

While it seems counterintuitive, stepping away from my father and mother was the best thing for my little girl.

Neither had taken good care of her.

Once I learned to step aside from those who hurt me; that was my pattern.

I step away from folks who hurt me.

It is plain, it is simple and it has had a positive change for me.

It matters not to me what their title is, all that mattered was how I felt in their presence and if it didn’t feel safe, warm, loving, joyful, then I would make my move.

My inner wellness had to matter more than anything in the world. It became my compass. Like a very very stubborn child, even a bullhead, I continued with this new pattern.

If it hurts or feels bad, I move away.

If it requires me to overlook or look around their negative behaviors, I move away.

If they are not accountable for their own actions, I move away.

If it gives them more power and leaves me powerless, I move away.

If they belittle and make snide remarks about my needs, I move away.

If they holler and scream I am insane, crazy, not well, I move away.

I have been given the luxury and freedom that most abused children do not have. I am an adult with a voice and a choice. I can support myself…I don’t’ have to put my survival in the hands of those who hurt me.

Children of abuse are not given this new pattern to follow, in fact they are ‘forced’ to do the opposite of what I have done.

They are made to succumb and return to ‘normal’ to get back in line of the family pattern, most often in order to survive. They are not self supporting.

How their abuse affects the family shows the pattern from generations before.

If a child’s abuse doesn’t shatter the family…it is the normal pattern and the way things are in this particular family tree.

If the child’s welfare isn’t put at the top of the list, the family’s pattern most likely is that the children’s needs are last, EVEN if the child has been abused. They will do what feels best or fits best in the family pattern.

It seems preposterous, but this I have witness first hand. I seen my father’s case through the eyes of the wounded child, and what I saw was all positive for my father and very negative for me.

Little by little I watched how my mother and siblings acted and how they responded, and who they took care of, spoke for and who they argued for, while I watched my father do nothing.

He didn’t take one teeny tiny move that showed he felt remorse or that he wanted to get out from under his disease…he didn’t have to lift a finger; all were doing the heavy lifting for him.

I watched and I witnessed this all with the eyes of the wounded child.

I kept my view as a wounded child, not as a daughter or sister…

I saw the family pattern being played out perfectly. I witnessed how this abuse continues on.

The only way childhood sexual abuse can continue on is with the consent and knowledge of the adults or heads of households.

Children depend on the adults for survival, cannot sway the family tree to act differently, their very food and shelter depend upon it.

I acted against the pattern and look at where I am sitting.

Alone in my own home… I am free of those who abused me.

A child doesn’t have this luxury, they are held captive until they can support themselves.

They are subjected to years and years of abuse and live a few feet away from themselves, trying to survive they have to be disconnected…

The sad part is, most are not able to reconnect.

They have learned to be this untreated abused person.

Learned to survive by blocking out their feelings, separating themselves from themselves. Living as a person that isn’t who they are.

I am not certain why I had the privilege to reconnect to my self, to walk with my wounded girl until we walked free. But I have and I have carved out a new pattern…a pattern without abuse.

September 28, 2011

abuse, behavior, childhood, FALC, learned, negative, patterns, sexual
My own formation.

In the past six years I have been learning new software, my body functions the same, it just responds differently.

My arms move, my mouth speaks, my brain thinks yet they are doing things completely in a new way.

It is like waking up one day and your body refuses to do what it used to do; the inner driving force has switched gears completely, it is all backwards.

This new software has me moving in the opposite direction of my old flying formation, I go right and others move left, I go up and the others go down, I feel totally out of zinc.

I am the lady in a country line dancing row… three steps off.

It seems I didn’t have a slow software exchange, but one day a whole complete system was inside of me.

Like a new me hopped inside and began living my life while still in my old life.

I have to give credit to my husband and children for being able to bring this new me into their old lives, to welcome and get used to her new ways.

As we go forth there will still be more steps I will take that will be out of rhythm with theirs, and we falter and then get used to this unique dance of ours. Me going one way and them going another in harmony.

We are dancing to the same song but moving with our own rhythm.

I often feel like the odd duck, but oddly a very free duck. I fly in my own formation.

July 15, 2011

changing, formations, Inner, knowing, life, patterns, self, software
Rescue Dolls…

Shortly after my Aunt died in a fire at her home, I rescued a box full of partially complete dolls. Their bodies were all stuffed, and their faces painted, wigs done, and their under garments compete down to tiny little socks and shoes.

I finished 7 dolls and gave one to each of my sisters, my mother and my Aunt’s daughter-in-law. The pattern called for dresses and pinafores and hats, so it was up to me to make the outer garments for she hadn’t begun to do that.

I meant to create one for myself, but time slipped away. It has been over 10 years since I made the last one.

As I have been wondering about doing a Lady Doll, it came to me that my doll would not have a face, and perhaps I could learn how to do my doll by putting together the whole doll…well, I skipped all the small details, like socks, and petticoats and pinafores.

I did find a hat and a pair of shoes, plus bloomers. I had to make her dress, it was a quick try and needs tweaking. I want to try and design a dress that is more appropriate for a Lady doll, instead of girl doll.

She seems to childlike…I will have to play with different clothes and perhaps a new body type. But I LOVE her hair.

While tossing ideas and inspiration it came to me, that I like my dolls and ladies without faces, for faces almost seem like masks…we can hide our true selves behind a face. And perhaps the face we are most familiar with was put on to keep our parents happy…or we have a social face, a business face…I like it best minus the face.

I have two faces that my aunt painted and it came to me to use them in a Lady Quilt, where the face will be separated from the form of the Lady…perhaps seeing herself from a distant or her face on the ground. I can’t wait to begin playing, now that I have a feel for how a doll goes together, we started here… She was a brunette and I changed her hair color…

I am grateful that I had the opportunity to save these dolls. The pattern was dated 1977, created by Rainie Crawford.

June 5, 2011

crawford, dolls, faces, fire, patterns, rainie
Mold in sight.

What I didn’t know about writing is that you are supposed to have a plan first, a graph, a map, an idea, an outline, something for the words to fall into, that you don’t just stand there empty handed and catching them as they fall.

I felt like a neglectful writer, unskilled, untaught and uncaring, yet as I step back and see the overview, I am astonished how hard most writers make it.

It seems they are trying to predict the unpredictable, like trying to control reality, or planning for an unknown future.

As I look upon my first 46 years of living, I had structure, I had rules of a religion to follow, and I had to fit into that, foregoing all my instincts and passion.

My natural spiritual self was whittled down to fit into their mold.

My mother sculpted this mold, and we had to squeeze ourselves into the walls, making sure we didn’t jut out unbecomingly.

Our goal was to replicate this mold and make our children to conform to look the same, sound the same, and walk the same, little molds of sameness.

Kept to the outside were words that didn’t match this mind set, this ideology and beyond their very rigid lines danced wonderful words and ideas in a field of pure potential…forbidden to us congregants.

We had to disregard all things that didn’t match the mold, and by doing so passed up 99.9% of reality…and lived with .1% of our self.

This .1% of me is where I began writing from, asking how I had sold so much of myself off and what did I truly believe coming from the base of me.

From the base of me I ask the question and have no rules as to what comes, or where it takes me, what conclusion we draw, what systems we debunk, there is nothing off limits, there are no walls between me and my words.

In fact I am tearing down the parts of me that have been crammed into the tight space, and giving life again to the long forgotten parts of me.

There just simply can’t be a grid to follow, for I have no idea who I am, where I am going or what my purpose is…writing is helping me define who I am.

I am meeting my words with a blank slate and they are coming from the mold of extreme restriction, so they too are excited not having to guard themselves and their truths.

We are the clay and the sculptor with no pattern or mold in sight…

March 23, 2011

about, blogging, constriction, exploring, Journaling, learning, life, molds, patterns, reality, Religion, self, strict, writing
Meant to be.

Motherhood begins in childhood, and womanhood starts there as well. The essence of who we are as a woman will directly relate to what kind of mother we are.

There is no separation between woman and mother; the two are one.

We don’t leave behind who we are as we take on the responsibility of a child, we simply add this to our ongoing relationships that are already in place.

A child joins your relationships and will emulate them as he begins to create his own, he watches how you treat yourself and how you allow others to treat you, and it is from there that he learns self-care.

My motherhood path began with me being a valiant co-dependent, a people pleaser and a whore for love and peace, there was very little of my life that was solely for me, most of it I lived for the benefit of others.

All my decisions and choices were linked to someone’s happiness or love, I made choices based on whether I would lose their approval or not.

When I stopped seeking approval and instead began living inside out doing what I loved, I began seeing a Me emerge, a separated unique individual, a self.

As I grew into being more me, I no longer needed others to support me, and it set them all free to be them selves.

My children were set free when I set myself free.

My children’s lives returned to them and they too are now free to be what they want to be from the inside out.

I am there to guide them to show they the lay of the land, but at the end of the day, they get to decide their fate depending upon the choices they make.

It isn’t my life it is theirs.

The freedom you give comes with self responsibility and that is what I believe the goal of each parent is, to make them ownership of their lives.

To raise them to see the consequences from the choices they make, and to allow them to sit in the consequence is the learning of life.

How we deal with all facets of life is how they learn to deal.

How authentic we are, how loyal to self we are, where our integrity lies, all will be reflected back to us in our children’s lives.

Mostly what we fail to notice is that our children’s lives will be lived as we live today, not our potential or what we plan to do, but as we do today.

To raise independent children, be independent.
To raise children who love themselves, love yourself.
Who you are today is the pattern your child will follow, our footsteps are leading them into a life we have.

We can’t do nothing and hope our children learn from our mistakes, we have to undo our mistakes.

There are a few, a slight few, changelings of this rule, they are the exceptions not the rule, that will strike out on their own and redefine themselves leaving behind a family, I know this happens for I was one.

I changed the family legacy by leaving instead of staying in the cycle of abuse/dysfunction and co-dependency; I had to walk out to save my self.
Time will tell as my young adult children leave our home and set out on their own making choices, was there enough time spent with me to learn a new way of being or were their formative years to tightly ingrained.

I sit here today aware that the woman who I was and the woman who I became, mothered the same children.

How this will affect them remains to be seen, what pattern will they follow, how deeply were they affected by their formative years and how much of an impact has my freedom made?

What I know for sure is that the more I remain honest with myself, the more I love myself, the brighter the second pattern is seen.

To be the best mother ever is to be the best you can be with your self.

Loving yourself enough to say no when you mean it.
Loving you enough to put up boundaries to keep hurt out.
Loving you to speak your truth always.
Loving your self as you find your self in this moment, knowing you are a work in progress and be willing to do what it takes in each moment to stand with your self.

You will then mother a child of strong courage to be who they were meant to be.

February 9, 2011

abuse, behind, child, childhood, choices, courage, dysfunction, family, girl, growing, healing, independent, learning, leaving, legacy, motherhood, patterns, separating, strong, womanhood
A new you emerges…

“When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.” ~Tuli Kupferberg

Somehow this quote paints a scene of great Art, of stepping out of the box and being presented with a wondrous new world.

In my experience breaking an old pattern requires stamina, fearlessness, standing out and being different, walking away from familiar and entering into the unknown, which I guess is where the new world emerges.

Even if the new world is much healthier, happier and more peaceful, there is sorrow as the old pattern dies.

It is a piece of your personality or a fragment of you that is being disposed of.

If I were to pile up all the old patterns that I broke, you would see a whole person standing there.

Her pattern had shades and tones of abuse and dysfunction, faint colors of washed out places of low self-esteem, heavy dark corridors of unawareness and brainwashing along with righteously wrong values.

She was an enigma, a very confusing mystery to unravel, a body of truth and a head of fiction.

The breaking of the pattern was all headwork, my patterns of thoughts and beliefs that didn’t match reality and I had to work to reconfigure them in my head.

It was going backwards in time and reworking or removing the patterns I had set in my head.

Patterns of me that were formed by childhood, patterns that reflect those who raised me, those who cared for me, doing the best they knew how.

It was their pattern that I was living by, not mine.

I was a designed for their use not mine.

When patterns are broken, a new you emerges….

January 3, 2011

behaviors, broken, life, New, old habits, patterns, rebuilding, reconfiguring, self, you
Change will Happen!

If you are not trying to change, you do not have any choices to make, you just keep repeating what you have been doing, there will be no inner struggle, no wondering or thinking, no stressing about how you will handle each new moment that arrives, where you will again be asked to make a choice, differently.

If you don’t make a new choice you remain unchanged, and if you do make a new choice you will be changed, but grow further and further from your old familiar ways.

Not changing is easy; it is mindless and falls effortlessly within your life, like smoke seeping into each minute.

Change is like breathing new air into each choice we are asked to make daily, the small and the large, the complicated and the simple, each little decision has to be dealt with as a if you were a new arrival on earth, yet with the magnetic draw of a long held pattern.

To jump the track of an old pattern isn’t as easy as one suspects and you will not know until you are actually the one doing the heavy lifting.

Heavy lifting is doing the opposite of what you are used to, the complete and total opposite is required in order to change.
You can’t change your life by doing nothing different, by not affecting your world and each relationship in it, the only way to change is to allow waves of new you flow into everything in your life.

Since you are the common denominator in your world and with all whom you spend time with, if you change, all will feel the ripple affect.

If there is no ripple, you haven’t changed.

In the book, “Tattoos on the Heart” by Gregory Boyle, he is speaking to a gang member who is asking “How many homies have you buried…you know, killed because of gangbanging?
“Seventy-five, son,” (this was some years ago. If he asked today, it would be more than twice that number.)

“Damn, G, seventy-five?” He shakes his head in disbelief, his voice a bare hush now. “I mean, damn…when’s it gonna end?”

I reach down to Omar and go to shake his hand. We connect and I pull him to his feet. I hold his hand with both of mine and zero in on his eyes.

“Mijo, it will end,” I say, “the minute…you decide.”

The moistening of his eyes surprises me. He grabs my hands in his.

“Well,” he says, “then, I decide.”

“Omar,” I tell him, “it has always been as simple as that.”

“How many things have to happen to you,” Robert Frost writes, “before something occurs to you?”

Change awaits us. What is decisive is our deciding.
Gregory Boyle

When you decide, change will happen!

November 4, 2010

acknowledging, addictions, affects, breaking, change, changing, choices, deciding, gregory boyle, habits, life, patterns, stuck, tattoos on the heart, unstuck
The Voices are Silent

I finished the Quiet Room by Lori Schiller and Amanda Bennett. What an inspiring story of girl with a broken mind; a schizophrenia mind.

She had voices in her head that were finally silenced with the proper medication, treatment and her tenacity to continue working on herself.

She explains, “I still hear the Voices from time to time. I try to take my own advice. I distract myself, lecture myself, and focus on the outside world. I have taught myself to use a little mantra when they reappear: “These Voices are not real. Don’t be frightened. Don’t get upset. They are not real. Don’t let them overcome you. Try and think of what happened just before you heard them. Is there some emotion you can isolate that will help explain why they are here now? They are not real. It’s okay. Don’t be afraid.”

“When I hear the Voices, I shake myself back to reality by using all my senses. If I am riding the train to Manhattan for example, I concentrate on the taste of Diet Coke and the smell of the perfume I am wearing. I look out the window at the changing view, and listen carefully to the sound of the conductor collecting tickets. I feel my own ticket flipping back and forth between my fingers.”
Lori Schiller

Even though I am not schizophrenic, I can relate to using reality to keep me on the path to wellness, how my voices were alive and walking in reality, voices of the dysfunctional family I left behind.

Medication was able to reduce the voices mostly and when they returned, she formulated ways to not believe them.

My experiences of walking out a dysfunctional family had the Voices on the outside in reality that were beckoning me backwards, and there wasn’t medication that would silence them, instead I had to be silent.

My Voices were sisters, brothers and mother, my father’s voice never appeared.

Voices and laughter, seemingly vanilla requests urging me to stop being so mental, so frightened, so weird, so odd, so standoffish, so separated, so cold, so heartless, so mean, so unkind…just like her voices in Lori’s head, mine too rose against me.

The only medication I have to silence their voices is my truth; it seems to keep them far away.

It is odd that my Voices are real and in living color and they too can threaten my newfound wellness, and perhaps tear little holes in my confidences, eroding newfound peace, as they bounce around like hysterical laughter, wanting me to join in the false hilarity.

There is a small part of me that longs for the old group, yet a much larger part of me overcomes that, knowing what I would be joining.

It is almost like I was raised in a Mental Hospital, and that I escaped into normal, and the old patients are beckoning me back.

And the patients in the Mental Hospital were told that they were living normal, and see me as going into a land of total insanity.

There are even times that I like Lori, have to concentrate on the smells, sights and sounds around me to keep me with reality, to know that I am okay, I am not the one with mental issues or dysfunctional patterns controlling my life, that I have done the due diligence to get me here.

Here the voices are silent.

October 30, 2010

Amanda Bennett, backwards, Dysfunctional, families, head, hysterical, illness, insanity, laughter, Lori Schilling, mental, mind, patterns, schizophrenic, The Quiet Room, thoughts, urging, voices
Thy Will Be Done

A thought came to me last night as I lay down to rest, “Being a Victim is easy….”

Being a victim requires NOTHING from you, you get to just sit and wait for the world to change.

Victims always have someone to blame you are never held accountable, you are blame free, a loving kind individual and the world is beating you up.

Someone is always coming in and wrecking your world so you lose your kind demeanor.

It is by far easier to point a finger at the cause of why you act the way you act, than it is to change your actions.

“If someone can steal your peace, You are the Loser”…says, Bikram.

I just never felt to the depth of my soul, that being a victim was the easy way out that it required less than actually making a change.

It seems that it is more painful to be a victim, but now I am wondering if that is true? Maybe it is actually harder to change, to walk out of the old patterns, and do something different.

Make a new response; require more from your self and less from the world, to bring back to you the ownership of all your behaviors.

Instead of people out there pushing your buttons, keep your fingers on your own buttons; turn the buttons inward, so when you explode, it was you who did it, not some outside source.

Changing from victim to empower is wearing your emotional clothes inside out, so all the buttons are on the inside, where there is no one to blame but yourself, each and every time you speak or act out, you are the only one hurting yourself.

Is it possible to be Masochistic to self?

It is a cycle of self-abuse.

How is it easier to remain in that role, than it is to stop the pain?

It just doesn’t seem right that it is easier to be hurt over and over, to have your hopes and dreams dashed again and again?

How is it so much easier to be so out of control of your self?

And yet, most of the victims I know are working so hard to control the world and yet are unable to see that they are the ones out of control in their own world.

There is a slight but profound difference between being in control in a world that’s in control, or being out of control by and out of control world.

The mirror affect yet again.

If you are a victim, the world is out to get you.

When you are not, the world is out to give you all that you could ever dream and more.

It is literally impossible to be kind in a mad world, the laws of the Universe works beautifully always, "Thy will be done".

October 4, 2010

affect, attracts, behaviors, Bikram, breaking, life, like, mirror, patterns, power, victim
Cheering for the Butterfly!

We would rather be ruined than changed;
We would rather die in our dread
Than climb the cross of the moment
And let our illusions die.

~W.H. Auden

As I sit in the graveyard of my illusions, I am left with merging emotions, crashing upon each other, overlapping – sorrow and freedom, sadness and joy, feeling left out and being spared, all swaying within like ghosts.

Memories of happier times try to overpower awareness of reality’s raw experiences; a game of pretend almost arises, like an abused woman who refuses to see the man who beat her, by focusing on the good times.

Hope plans a future that isn’t to be, sorrow knowing you can never go home.

Being sprung free and yearning for the cage.

Celebrating while crying.

Unable to firmly grasp one without feeling the loss of the other.

It feels like I am dying while alive, grieving for my own self.

Having one foot in the grave of my old life, while learning to walk in my new.

The hardest part is to let me die, to be strong and keep killing the illusion, the dysfunctional relationships, letting them go on without me.

I wish I could say I am tough and this is easy to feel the sorrow and pain as another section of my life dies…and I am left in the space of empty.

The wise say that without change we would have no butterflies.

But the time between caterpillar and butterfly is you are neither, suspended in time…

You don’t fit with the caterpillars anymore, and you still have no wings to fly.

In a cocoon I live, one life not finished and new one not fully begun.

Suspended in soup of transition.

Crying for the caterpillar and cheering for the Butterfly!

October 1, 2010

abuse, butterfly, caterpillars, change, changes, Dysfunctional, life, of, out, patterns, transitions