I M Perfect lady

Tag: prisoner

  • Love will never leave you Powerless.

    In the past seven years, my brother and I have been dialoguing and most often coming to the same point, but from two different directions.  But we have always honored and respected each other enough to only speak our truths, even if and when that truth landed in unsettling ways…it seemed that we needed each of our sides in order to fully embrace and know the lay of the land.

    Our conversations often times are batting words and definitions around, trying to understand where the other is coming from.  For while we were raised in the same house, we came out differently, but the same. We both walked forth dysfunctional, yet displayed it in two different ways.

    I have been telling him for many many years, that he is Authentically Dysfunctional, and it meant to me that he was bravely owning all of his abuse and how it left him…and how he has done extremely remarkable in undoing the damage by learning to function in reality.

    What he heard was he could never not be Dysfunctional.  What I had implied was that he was openly dysfunctional and recovering his functions.

    For what I believe is the heart or root cause of the term Dysfunctional, is that you are unable to function correctly in a situation, that you do odd things instead of what nature would do.

    Our Function as a human being, no longer functions correctly; our systems begin to operate backwards.

    We are drawn to people who hurt us, instead of being repelled away.

    The complexities of living backwards is mountainous; our whole lives are lived blindly hurting ourselves and blaming others.

    We can't function on our own.

    We need others to change so we can be okay.

    We have lost the connection inside of us to move away.

    In abuse, when someone overpowers us, especially someone we love and trust, we become powerless to them.  We are then left minus the switch to move away.

    To function means you have your power back.  You can move towards and away from people and behaviors that don't feel okay to you…You become unfrozen.

    Without this switch, you are dysfunctional.  You can't function and be the one to move.  You are left in a place without legs.

    The Function of a victim is to be powerless, unable to move, frozen without choices.  Many folks get stuck in this position after abuse, especially if the abuser is your caretaker.  We simply are left without a choice, we can't move, so we grow up in the position of being powerless.

    Being powerless and being unable to move is the function of a victim, and a victim we will remain, until we can move.

    While my whole family of origin sees me as being cold bitter, angry and stuck, it is actually the complete opposite.  I am free and functional for the first time since my father's abuse.  I lived as a victim for 4o years, and now in the last 7 have been working to become functioning as a natural human being.

    I now have the ability to move away from folks who hurt me, who bring toxic energy…

    In order to function again, you first have to see where you are unable to move…where you are a victim, where you haven't moved away from abuse…That is my meaning of being authentically dysfunctional; you have to be real with what is not working in your life.

    If you cannot see your self in prison, you can't set your self free.

    And I do believe, that it is easier at times to stay prisoner in a life that you know, compared to walking free into one that you don't know.  

    Just as in the experiment of mice, who were raised in a shock box, one that would emit shocks in order for them to eat…when they were given two choices, a box without shocks and food or one with, they all chose to continue with what they were used to.

    I do get that it is easier to continue being shocked than it is to learn a new way of being.  It is easier to sit in the jail and be a victim, than it is to walk free.

    But the bottom line, is that you and you alone decide to move your switch or to let it be.  Once you know, you can't not know…and once you know, you are willingly being a victim, and then, IS that really a victim or are you now an active participant?

    Being authentically dysfunctional is admitting you can't function…and in acknowledging you are unable to function, is the first function of becoming functional.

    If you can't see where you lost your power, you can't get it back…it remains lost.  

    Sometimes, it is hard to get your power back from those who took it in the first place, harder still if you believe love is attached.  But here is what I know for sure, love will never leave you powerless.

    (Dysfunction, equals no power, which then adds up to no love.)

     

     

  • Bathed in the Light.

    “A chick pecks its way out of its eggshell and is born into the world when a toxic gas fills up the interior of the egg. At that point, it is literally dying to be born.
    Is there a toxic situation in your life that it’s time to break free of in order to born to the next level of your existence? Is there a symbolic eggshell surrounding you that is time to peck away at, freeing yourself to live more fully?”
    Marianne Williamson

    I love this question and I love the visual it portrays, how we can literally feel like we are suffocating in life and need to start pecking holes in what we are doing.

    And I love “dying to be born”.

    Most changes, at least life altering changes, require a dying in order for there to be a birth, a letting go in order to grab on to something new, a giving up one way before gaining something new.

    Change is a one two step.

    “You have to be willing to let go of who you are, to become who you want to be.” I can’t remember the author of that quote, but Wayne Dyer uses this often.

    The little chick can’t stay in the egg and be born, she has to be willing to get out of her toxic life in order to thrive.

    And the greatest news is that we will know intuitively when the time has come, when we can no longer remain in a relationship, when its toxic energies simply overwhelm and threaten to kill the essence of who we are IF we are to remain inside the shell of that old relationship.

    Like a very brave little chick, we have to go out into a very big and strange land…leaving behind a relationship we have outgrown.

    As the little chick, once we peck our way free of this toxicity, we are free to live a life we can’t even imagine it can be.

    From a small confined limiting space to the wide-open field of pure potential that Rumi speaks about.

    The visual is striking, a dark small space of an eggshell or the expanse that surrounds it.

    Held in the darkness or bathed in the Light.

  • The Key

    “Dostoevsky wrote that the best way to keep a prisoner from escaping is to make sure he never knows he’s in prison. Many of us live this way, not even knowing how desperately we are trapped by the stories we tell to make sense or our experience.  Once these stories are in place, we choose, modify, and twist new experiences to fit our expectations.  What we think of as the “truth” is actually an elaborate and deliberate fiction composed by our minds.  Realizing that our story is really arbitrary, that there are infinite other stories that may be every bit as accurate, opens the prison door of your belief system, allowing you to walk out if you so choose.” 

     Martha Beck, The Joy Diet

     

    What I find so intriguing about denial, the mind and the way our beliefs hold us prisoner in our own lives, is that we don’t know we are in prison, so we don’t try to escape!

     

    This failing to escape keeps us held prisoner.

    Failing to try to climb the prison walls, to challenge our unchanging lives, our unexplored and untried experiences, we sit in our lives never attempting to push out the walls.

     

    I see this as another way to look at denial, when you can’t tell if you’re in the jail or outside.

    As I go about my days, the more choices I have to say yes and to say no is a huge indicator of being in jail or out.

     

    I am astounded that so many believe they are free when they are not.

     

    The ultimate denial is in the fabric of your being; the upbringing and being raised in a belief system that holds you prisoner and you don’t even know it.

     

    Denying you are a prisoner is the key.

     

    The key that locks your life away from you.