Tag: perfect

• 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!

  June 4, 2011

  abuse, actions, brainwashing, childhood, freedom, imperfections, lose, more, no, parents, perfect, power, Religion, self, silent

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• Treat the Mail Lady

  After 7 months of delivering mail, I have come to conclusion I will never be 100% accurate, for no matter how hard I try, there always seems to be letters that cling to each other and one gets filed wrong into the wrong box or I get names and addresses transposed and there they sit waiting for the owner of the mailbox to discover my ineptness.

  Of course my errors always land in mailboxes of perfect people, people who have never made an error in their lives, and instead of just putting my error back in the box and gently put up the flag for me to pick it up, they hand deliver it back to the Post Office so my boss can see.

  It is like I have a club of tattle tellers! For luck would have it, I am a repeat offender to the ones who are not willing to keep it just between us.

  As a mail lady, I can tell you a few things you can do to make the mail lady’s day.

  If I make a mistake, just slip it back in the box and raise the flag, I will pick it up and understand why you didn’t want it.

  When you do get one of my errors, I would appreciate if you didn’t write on the envelope, “Wrong Address” for the real owner will know it has taken a detour along the way.

  Running a mail route is like filing letters but our files are miles apart and when we make a mistake there are people in the files hollering at us. Okay, not all but a few loud mouths.

  And these loud mouths are usually owners of mailboxes whose doors don’t stay shut or are hard to open, have red flags missing and then complain when I don’t pick up their mail, have boxes set too far off the road or tilted too far back that I can’t retrieve their mail easily.

  It seems they take joy in finding my mistakes but overlook their own.

  However, there are some delightful people who are kind and have the patience and understanding and just slip my mistake back in the box in silence…and even put notes reminding me that their mail is on hold.

  Most are good caretakers of their boxes and actually worry about making it easier on me…and are very empathetic.

  I deliver a fair amount of packages to a woman who lives alone on a farm overlooking a lake. She has gardens and many bird feeders and a real tiny sauna, a few barns and a smile with bright eyes. Her face is unlike most, for scars of a long ago injury or illness took most of it, yet she is always apologetic for the packages I carry. I would bring her the moon…and feel no strain…I don’t make mistakes on her mail, but feel she would be kind if I did.

  There is a talkative positive older woman who paints and is willing to show me her latest picture, she rides an exercise bike, gets her hair done on Tuesdays, for Wednesday is senior lunch day and gives me oranges and cookies…she too would pooh away my mistakes and just put them back in the box…life is too short for grumpiness. She was sick a few weeks ago, and she didn’t like the way sick felt in her…she gave me glowing reports of the kind treatment she received at the Doctors office…she only meets kindness.

  The lonely folks wait for me, idling along; waiting to say a word or two…our conversations have one-day gaps, we learn about each other bit by bit, stretched out over months of daily one minute visits…slowly we are becoming friends.

  I no longer believe there will come a time of no mistakes, nor do I believe I will become friends with folks who are forever looking at me to fail…and perhaps I am making them happy by giving them something to complain about.

  What is so odd is that the ones with a legitimate complaint have spirits of goodwill…and the others find a misfiled letter a cause to complain.

  It is peculiar to ride along the same route day after day, seeing the same people and learning who they are by how they respond to life and life’s mistakes…you can tell a lot about people by how they treat the mail lady.

  

  April 28, 2011

  life, Mail, mailboxes, mistakes, perfect, route, rural, treatment

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• A field with no rules.

  Rewrite, Rewrite, Rewrite were the last words spoken in our final writing class for the year, they echoed and bounced around in my head, unsure if this was encouragement or a reprimand.

  We had just sat though an hour and a half of listening to the words the students had written. Words of emotion, of defeat, of growing up, of unique perspectives, of finding their way, and to me there was no need to rewrite a thing.

  They had given me pieces of their lives told with feelings and said out loud in fear or with great bravado, with pride and with youthful expression, to me it seemed they were perfectly perfect fitting into their life experience.

  Where they were in life fit perfectly in how they wrote. I am not sure rewriting is the answer, it seems that if you say, rewrite you are rejecting what they wrote.

  Rewrite, redo, and reword it…

  The juxtaposition between the enthusiastic teacher, her encouraging voice, and her caring eyes, and the words, Rewrite struck me with contradiction…like a smile with a slap.

  I then wondered how often I had done this, ‘rejecting the project’ while trying to teach technique.

  I began an Art Quilt group, and my intentions were to be with ladies who enjoy creating quilts without patterns, to let go of the ‘rules’ of quilting and just play with the fabrics and even mix metaphors and jumble up what those who came before us defined as perfect quilting.

  Rebels, daring to not follow the well-trodden path.

  When I began quilting, my Aunt told me that I could do anything I wanted, that I didn’t have to follow or adhere to any quilt rule or pattern, that quilting was making a sandwich, putting fabric batting fabric, and I was the creator.

  She taught me without teaching me rules.

  I wonder if you can do the same with writing, if you could just use the same writing instruments; words, paper, pencil and then allow writing to come what may.

  Let the writer go free, allow the writer to follow what feels right for him, to not make him bend and twist into a forgone conclusion of what writing needs to be.

  Whether it be writing, quilting or living life, we seem to neglect the person for the skill, toss out the personality, the Spirit, the essence in trying so hard to get to perfect.

  Maybe it isn’t the writing or the quilt or life but it’s getting to Perfect.

  Is there a way to teach without spoiling it with perfect?

  I guess what we all fear in life is not being able to measure up to perfect.

  I say, once again, kill perfect, declare it a swear word…

  Imperfect has to replace it; it will free so many from the fear of failing. Whether you are writing or creating art, if you let go of perfect you will set free in wide-open fields with unlimited possibilities.

  Lets all play in the field of pure potential as the wise masters say…a field with no rules.

  April 7, 2011

  art, freedom, imperfections, letting go, life, perfect, rules, teaching, writing

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• My Ladies come alive!

  Sometimes in life the Universe offers you a glimpse at someone who is a delight to watch and listen to.

  She arrived wearing a black hat, set jauntily on her head and big interesting jewelry all off set on an outfit in black.

  Around the room she went introducing herself, holding your hand, looking you in the eyes and repeating your name.

  She immediately changed the energy of the room, at least for me.

  As she gave her message, she was delighted with herself and her Art, asking for others to join her vision.

  Her Art is a community project; it involves everyone who is open and willing to share.

  She envisions 10,000 individual stories all hung together joining a long line of connections, weaving the past to the present, showing the walks of many who have walked upon the same roads we travel today.

  Her idea is to see whose shoulders you stand upon.

  Written in the first person, a story and a picture, all hanging together in a line of humanity, their lives, their struggles, the journey of their times, told by someone today.

  The Art will be displayed this summer at an opera and a music festival.

  She needed help with panels upon which the story will rest. Some of us will lend a hand in making her vision possible.

  After she involved us in her Art, she then sat back and enjoyed ours.

  It was fun to watch her engage life, how she seemed to hang on each second, paying close attention to what was at hand…astute, curious and involved and very much her own self and very comfortable there.

  I have to admit that I wanted to share my quilts with her, just to watch her reaction.

  I was tickled when she smiled and literally gave me a thumbs up, very pleased.

  She epitomizes my ladies or my ladies are a reflection of her!

  What is the saying life imitating Art…

  It was like seeing one of my Ladies come alive!

  December 15, 2010

  art, at, breathing, comfortable, community, home, imitating, Imperfect, lady, life, living, opera, own, perfect, project, self

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• Tree In Tree

  By Deena Metzger

  “I am no longer afraid of mirrors where I see the sign of the amazon, the one who shoots arrows.
  There was a fine red line across my chest where a knife entered,
  but now a branch winds about the scar and travels from arm to heart.
  Green leaves cover the branch, grapes hang there and a bird appears.
  What grows in me now is vital and does not cause me harm. I think the bird is singing.
  I have relinquished some of the scars.
  I have designed my chest with the care given to an illuminated manuscript.
  I am no longer ashamed to make love. Love is a battle I can win.
  I have the body of a warrior who does not kill or wound.
  On the book of my body, I have permanently inscribed a tree.”
  Deena

  Today while delivering mail, I listened to the CD that accompanies the book, “Saved by a Poem” by Kim Rosen.

  There were many poems, or lines in the poems that spoke to me, but the image of this one stuck with me.

  If you go to her website, http://www.deenametzger.com you will see a fabulous woman who is fully embracing I M Perfect.

  She had a mastectomy and placed a tattoo upon the scar…

  November 16, 2010

  a, by, deena, imperfection, in, Kim, mastectomy, metzger, perfect, Poem, Rosen, Saved, tatoo, tree, women

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• Let the Pain Out

  “Real difficulties can be overcome, it is only the imaginary ones that are unconquerable.” ~Theodore N. Vail

  When you face what you actually are compared to what you desire to be, you will find much peace, it is trying to be someone else that’s impossible.

  Letting go of the potential, the prize of someday, the if only of yesterday, and the idealized version of self that is the hardest to do.

  To sit down fully in imperfection and disappointing the mind, by facing all the evidence contrary to many beliefs.

  What I felt most for the men on stage with Oprah was that they were unable to claim their lost innocence and how abuse changed them.

  They wanted what is impossible to attain, and in doing so sit in denial of whom they are.

  They are the combination of innocence lost and the affects of abuse, and when they can see the imperfections of their lives, they will see how perfectly it is.

  How abuse does steal innocence, how if you don’t address abuse, abuse lives its life for you.

  It seems that you are a victim when you repeatedly succumb to the wishes of if only, or I can’t be different, and you become a victor when you stand and state the obvious.

  I was abused.
  I am confused because of the abuse.
  I lived an upside down life due to being abused.

  Until we can recognize how upside down we are, we can’t seek to right ourselves.

  By holding on to the picture of innocence, we miss who we now are.

  I will never not know the feelings of terror of a father.
  I will never not know who I would be without the abuse, but I can know who I can be in spite of it.

  There is a life after abuse, a way to reclaim your life today, but not undo yesterday.

  Life after abuse starts when you out yourself.
  Until then, you are locked in the dark with the secret.

  Once you step out, your life after abuse can begin…Abuse and its shame lives in the dark quiet silence.

  You don’t have to tell the whole world, but speak to someone, open the wound and let the pain out.

  November 8, 2010

  abuse, be, child, guilt, imperfection, Open, perfect, secret, shame, silence, speak, telling, wound, you

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