I M Perfect lady

Tag: reality

  • My Body and Mind are with Me.

    I have been working on a book that has photographs of my quilts along with some writings and it feels like it is a completion to my Art Therapy. Sitting with each quilt and writing about what wisdom it imparted to me; a journey in fabric.

    I now can see why folks write books, for it takes all the loose ends and ties them together, completing a section of your journey.  I am seriously thinking now, of doing a reading book…one that will encapsulate how it feels to wake up in abuse and walk with truth in order to be free.

    It finally feels like I have picked apart and investigated many aspects of abuse and that I can leave it behind with full understanding…knowing it, will allow me to sidestep the same potholes in my future.

    The greatest part of my journey wasn't the act of abuse, but how I developed and grew from there.  How my mind was completely changed to make me believe in an alternate reality, one where I lived for 40 years.

    In my experience, healing from abuse is to work your way back to reality…where the truth fits in.

    It feels like I am entering into a new phase, one that isn't so littered with fragments of an unexplored life.  The mountain of abuse has to be climbed, it isn't good enough to just glance its way and walk on.  I had to become intimate with abuse in order to rescue my self from it.

    Abuse had infested each aspect of my life, for I was the common denominator and my mind was present in each of my life experiences, even when the truth was kept out. A confused mind recorded my history, "weaving the most plausible story"…as Dr. Jill Bolte writes.

    Wrestling my life back from my mind and correcting its errors has been a thrilling terrifying ride.  

    Martha Beck describes it this way. "I recall its horror and beauty, the enormity of all the things I have lost and the incalculable preciousness of the things I have gained.  I wouldn't give up the journey – not a moment of it.  On the other hand I have no desire to live it again."  

    I agree with her 100%.  I have no desire to restart this process of rewiring my mind connecting it to reality…nor would I want to again go through the disconnection of so many relationships.

    It truly is like killing one life and birthing another. Harder than death, for in death, you are just gone.  Now, I am gone from their lives, but alive.

    I felt the death of my old life. I grieved for me…while resurrecting a me.

    All that really died were lies….and what was born was truth.

    But, the lies I had come to love.

    And now I had to learn to love the truth…it took awhile for me to love the truth, for the first tastes of truth were seasoned with abuse.

    Now, I am comfortable here.  

    I love truth, and feel uncomfortable with lies and skirting around issues and pretend…or silence about the things that matter.

    I even believe that my mind is happier, more at peace, relaxed and content…for it no longer has to manufacture an overlay to hide what I didn't want to know.

    My body and mind are at ease, they agree.

    My Spirit feels safe to be me…for it no longer has a conflicted perception of the world in front of it.

    Where I am, my body and mind are with Me.

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  • Get us back

    As I was mowing the grass yesterday, I wondered if all Mental Illnesses mean you are not in reality?  That the meaning of being ill in your mind, is when you can't see or be with reality? While there are different stages of not being in reality, are all various degrees… being removed from what is truly going on?

    What I do know from my experience, is that as a child of abuse, IF you can't speak of it, and must hide it, you are forced to live in an alternate reality…you could say forced to make your mind come up with a nicer version of where you live.  And this is the seed that starts our Mental Illness.

    The beginning of being 'sick' with reality.  

    I think many will focus or see "Mental Illness" as a mind that has gone wrong, but not how or what its causes are.  Just seeing it as a broken mind, but not looking at this from a wider viewpoint, doesn't give the overall picture of what it truly means as an application in life?

    Perception is all we change when we are asked to keep a secret.

    We are not changing the person who has abused us, JUST our perceptions of him/her.

    And this change of perception is the cause or being mental in reality.

    What many have suggested to me, is that I went mental, when I flopped into reality and became unmoveable there.  I would no longer 'change my perception' I became rooted in reality, no matter their pleads, their reasons, their needs….I was like a rock.

    I clung to reality like it was my life line and I refused to let go.  

    Now I know that my life prior was a life of mental illness, where a huge proportion of it was lived with incorrect perceptions.

    What I didn't know is that I was a highly functioning mental lady…at the time.  I was not able to know my perceptions were all wrong about my childhood and family.  

    Knowing this is common place after abuse, makes me normal.

    Here is what Terry Wise wrote in her book, "Waking Up".

    "Does not talking about it allow you to become less aware of it?" (Betsy her therapist asked)

    "I guess not," I replied, suddenly realizing that of course, I was always aware of the things that bothered me.  But, prompting a more extensive discussion about my anxiety by admitting this to Dr. Glaser was another matter. "Regardless, it still feels worse to talk about it," I continued."

    "It may feel worse at first, Terry. But, I believe in facing our feelings head on, not running from them. Talking about the anxiety over and over again will give you a different understanding of it.  If you develop a different understanding, you will eventually feel less anxious," Betsy said, attempting to reassure me."

    "Yes, but that doesn't mean I can't hate talking about how I feel," I replied."

    "What feelings do you hate talking about?"

    "Anxiety and loneliness. Even when I am with people, I feel alone."  I soon learned that the more uncomfortable or anxious I became, the more Betsy pushed. What's more, from this session forward, she always knew when to push, as my discomfort was written in red, all over my face."

    "Do you ever remember feeling like this before?" she asked."

    "Like what:" I stalled."

    "Anxious, alone, or anything else you are feeling right now," Betsy sighed rolling her eyes at having to drag every word out of me."

    "Yes, plenty of times. Except for the years Pete was healthy, I've probably felt like this most of my life.  I've never felt so disconnected," I explained.  My face instantly began to flush again.  I had always been an expert at creating appearances, choosing when and where to maintain my composure. That was over.  My anatomy forced my hand."

    "Terry, why are you so anxious? What haven't you told me?" she persisted. I could hardly hear her words over the pound calypso drums that now inhabited the inside of my heart."

    "I don't want to say."

    "Why not?"

    "Because, then it will become true," I replied, surprising myself with the insight.  Until I voiced this answer, even I had never been fully aware of this fear."

    "I don't understand.  Explain that to me," Betsy demanded.

    "Because saying things out loud is different.  If I don't put some of my thoughts into words, I can still hold onto the chance that my beliefs may not be true,"  I explained. Somehow I had deduced that hearing my thoughts aloud could transform a feeling into a reality."

    "But if you talk about your thoughts, maybe there will be a different way to understand them," Betsy suggested.

    "There isn't any other way.  I already understand exactly what I'm feeling. Believe me Betsy, I know certain things about myself, and they are undeniable no matter how you look at them," I insisted."

    "There are always other ways. Terry, do you remember how you felt when I first talked about Louis and the abuse?  You've felt like this before, but after you talked, your perspectives changed in ways that you hadn't perdicted. What are these 'things' that you know about yourself? What are you so afraid to say out loud?"

    "Anxiety throbbed in every organ of my body. Even my tongue felt like it had a heart of its own.  Throughout my adult life, I had numerous experiences with public speaking. Even if I was rattling inside, my complexion had never changed, and I always remained poised.  Now however, I had no choice but to step forward."

    "Mostly its that I am a fraud," I confessed, inhaling deeply."

    "What do you mean?"

    "I'm not the person that people think I am. There is so much about me that people don't know."

    "What don't they know?" Betsy asked."

    "They don't know how I feel about life or myself. Generally, people think I have my shit together, that I am confident, and self-assured. I've scammed everyone into believing that I'm someone I'm not," I answered.

    "So then tell me, Terry, who are you?" Betsy asked.

    "I would rather not say."

    "Why not?"

    "Because, like I told you, once I say it, it will be for real," I repeated."

    "You mean that as long as you don't say the words, how you feel won't be real?" Betsy would not let up for a moment."

    "I suppose," I answered, feeling her reasoning loosen my stronghold."

    "Please Terry.  I want you to tell me what it is about you that you are so afraid to say," Betsy softly pleaded.  Her persistent kindness gave me a final push."

    "I'm selfish and dishonest," I whispered, slowly peeling back another layer of my appearances."

    "Why do you think you are dishonest?" she asked."

    "Because I've alway needed to feel someone worry about me. When I was younger used to pretend or exaggerate things, so that my friends would be concerned. there is definitely something wrong with me." Until the moment the answer rolled off my tongue, I had always planned on taking this "quality" of mine to my grave. I immediately felt my anxiety rise incrementally with every degree of my body tempature."

    "Why do you think that makes you dishonest?" Betsy was surprisingly unfazed."

    "Because, I did those things for attention, and to feel taken care of.  My feelings are not truthful if I embellish them."

    "Terry, I think if we look closely enough at your history, and the people in your life, you would see that others were not always able to give you what you needed.  This isn't a surprise. Obviously, nobody can get every one of their needs met all the time. But, I think what is remarkable is that you found a way to fill some of them.  This does not mean you were dishonest.  it just means you found a way to get what you were missing," Betsy explained."

    "No, Betsy.  I always felt cared for and loved by the people in my life.  I was born with a sickness.  I know it," I insisted."

    "You could have been cared for and loved, while at the same time, had needs that weren't being met.  It's not black or white, or either-or, Terry," Betsy replied.  "What sickness do you think you were born with?"

    "I don't know. There's something wrong with me because I am the type of person that I am, and the attention I crave."

    "What type of person are you?"

    "I finally decided to brave my most private, defining, character flaw. "It's hard to tell you. But, I guess it doesn't matter saying it, or not saying it, won't change the fact that it's true," I began, inching out from behind one of my most private walls of self-condemnation."

    "What Terry? What's the truth?" Betsy softly asked, trying to cushion my turmoil."

    "The truth is that I am a loser."  My mouth felt like it had produced its own sounds."  Terry Wise.

    This book clearly shows the state we get left in when we are not allowed to be with reality….how we flip reality around and in turn it flips us backwards.

    Instead of my father being bad, I was.

    Instead of my mother being unloving, I was unlovable.

    So, again, it is my humble opinion, that mental illness is not being able to be with reality…we were forced into being mental in order to survive and to be loved.

    I highly recommend reading this book…it is a great exchange between those outside of reality and those who work to get us back.



  • Uncomfortable to Face

    There is a one two punch in following your feelings.  The blow that you were right when you actually wanted to be proved wrong and secondly that your inner compass is spot on. 

    What people fail to appreciate is that I am not creating the truth that affirms me, they are acting on their own, by their own volition.  

    I am not putting words in mouths or fingers to keyboard, I am not manipulating them or their blog posts or the conditions of their blogs. They are doing this on their own free will.  

    I simply observe and respond.

    My brother's blog, http://www.messyguru.typepad.com received a comment from Jim Torola that succinctly shows why I had to back away.  The character assignation he delivered to my brother has no proof in reality. None.  

    I am not defending my brother, he does this well enough on his own, but I want the record to show if you will, that my actions were validated.

    I can't know why Jim wrote what he wrote or where these ideas came from.  All I can know, is that they don't ring true for me.  He wasn't writing about the brother that I know.

    Walking hand in hand with reality is often painful when you want a different outcome.  But, I have learned that regardless of my wishes, reality marches on.

    It seems one blog has erased all the past posts, but the last one. 

    Are we as good as our last word?  Can you live without a past?  Can you simply erase it like blog posts?  Can you leave out the dark parts and focus up ahead?  Is it possible to live life like you were born today?

    My history is precious, each morsel and drop. Each ugly stain and scuff…is my journey. There is no word I would erase, no part I would remove, no person I would not have met, no lesson I would have missed.

    Each and every thing I have said and done is me being me.  Certainly there are places and very long stretches of me acting unconsciously…of presenting the perfect rendition of a person who is brainwashed.  A confused lost abused person. I did that well.

    I even did a great presentation of exiting out of a dysfunctional family while being dysfunctional.  I was and am viewed as mental and crazy…certainly that can apply. 

    I no longer fit into what they call 'normal' and 'family'.  I stand out, thankfully so.  I no longer mesh with their mentalness.

    But, erase a part or forget a moment, or live like I had no past….never.  My past is what I had to overcome to become who I am today.  

    It was like all aspects of myself were taken away and I was set upon scavenger hunt to get them back.  Finding a piece of my self here and there, a part of me lost in this belief and that desire.

    If I had left my past behind and set out to form a completely new me, I would have left my soul behind.  I would have skipped the hunt to find the real me.

    It would have been leaving one nightmare to build a fantasy…a very similar tactic that an abused child uses.  It wipes out the harsh reality and goes on to create a fantastical blog of kindness…while reality marches on.

    This is exactly what I did as a child.  My reality was too unkind, so I created a nice looking happy place for me to go to, not looking or recording the dark history…

    And sadly, while I was busy in my new happy space, a pedophile was busy molesting little girls. 

    I no longer try to escape to a fantasy land and instead turn and head into that which is uncomfortable to face.

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    Photograph by Hannah Jukuri

     

     

     

     

     

  • The body truly doesn’t lie

    Within my family, there are two ways in which we have dealt with the sexual abuse of our childhoods.  One side believes and is actively in the camp of forgiving and forgetting, while only two of us are in the camp of discovering our own story and giving free expression…as Alice Miller writes in The Body Never Lies.

    " In each and every case I examined, I was able to establish that when people found the kind of therapeutic care and companionship that enabled them to discover their own story and give free expression to their indignation at their parents behavior, they were able to liberate themselves from the maltreated child's destructive attachment. As adults they were able to take their lives into their own hands and DID NOT NEED TO HATE THEIR PARENTS. And the opposite was the case whose therapist enjoined them to forgive and forget, actually believing that such forgiveness could have a salutary, curative effect. They remained trapped in the position of small children who believe they love their parents but in fact allow themselves to be controlled all their lives by the internalized parents and ultimately develop some kind of illness that leads to premature death. Such dependency ACTIVELY FOSTERS THE HATRED that though repressed, remains active, and it drives them to direct their aggression at innocent people. We ONLY HATE AS LONG AS WE FEEL TOTALLY HELPLESS." Alice Miller.

    This is extremely accurate in my experience.  

    I have do not hate my parents.  I understand them.  I completely get who they are and that the only love they can give me is their backwards hurtful love.  

    While I also totally feel the aggression of my siblings towards me, the innocent in the equation of my parents abuse.

    I can also sense this underneath the 'Forgiving' folks, the rage and anger seething while on the surface the speak kind words.  

    In fact, that is a perfect description of my mother in my childhood.  

    Interesting to know, that Forgiveness and Forgetting, actually fosters hate. And here is what I also know to be right on target…."You only hate as long as you feel totally helpless."  

    Empowerment allows you to feel love…and what I feel most from my siblings is this twisted dichotomy….the surface of 'forgiveness' while underneath rages hatred in their physical bodies.

    The body truly doesn't lie…

  • Dream it differently.

    It seems like life can be broken down into two categories; those who are dream weavers about reality and those who walk right down the middle of reality.  

    I have lived both ways…and know that the dream weavers are not aware that they are not in reality or that their dream isn't real.  They have been sucked into the dream from the time they were very little and all their love and security lies within the dream…and reality is harsh and bitter, cold and uncomfortable, if leaves no room for dreams.

    Did you know that only those of us who have been abused or NOT allowed to live naturally and organically as a Spiritual Being on a human journey, build dreams. 

    Only those of us with a harsh reality build a dream above it.

    We live there NOT because we are dreamers, but because it hurts too much to live in reality.  The deeper the dream…the harsher reality.

    As a child it would have been too painful to know that my father hurt me and my mother didn't care.  I had to paint a better picture, and I did….and then I got so lost from reality, that I lived the picture instead.

    It isn't a Conscious thought, it is the natural survival mechanism…to go into your mind to escape reality.  

    I lived there for 46 years in a picture about reality and then one day a little girl spoke my truth and I heard it.  

    I heard that voice say what I recognized and it didn't match the picture I had in my mind, but it matched the feelings in my body.

    I was then catapulted out of the picture and was immediately immersed in a life that was full of strangeness and horror, but it felt completely right.

    There is no point in arguing with folks who are living their lives in the dream state, who find it too painful to step into reality…you literally can't reach them.  

    They don't want us to be part of the dream. And in fact we will awaken them to the dream they are living.  I believe their minds are quick to shut us down and toss us out, the quicker the better, for you are ruining their dreams.

    It was extremely painful and exhilarating to awaken from the dream I had created, and be doused with reality's icy cold awareness, but it clearly saved my soul.

    I believe that my picture shell was cracking prior to the big shatter; that I had begun to get disenfranchised by it all, I was no longer totally believing in the dream…yet not ready or totally comfortable about leaving the picture behind.  In fact, I had wondered how I would be able to do that which I longed for.

    I had started to doubt the church and wondered how to get out.

    I had started to resent my mother more and more.

    I had yearned to be free to just be me…a different me, a Lighter me, a me that wasn't so bogged down by others.  Yet I had no clue how to do it.  Where to begin???

    I had backed up from church and even being involved fully in family. Even if I arrived at the functions, I had begun to look at things differently.

    I was ripe for the change when the drama hit.  I was perfectly cured to popping out.  I had had it.  I was tired of the life I was living, it no longer inspired me…it instead felt completely draining.  It was hard to live as me.  I was done.  I just didn't know how to live diferently, what I wanted or even how or where to begin.

    And like the magic of the Universe and the stars all lined up.  I was ready to leave and the opportunity arose…when the truth knocked this time, I answered the door.

    It was no accident in my life, no tragedy, but a longed for escape…a doorway to the truth.

    What I didn't understand at the time, was that I was waking up in my life.

    I wasn't tired of living, of was tired of not living my truth.  My picture making energies were quickly drying up…I was exhausted.

    I wonder if depression really is losing the ability to keep a picture going?

    It seems totally and utterly implausible to believe that you can paint a pretty picture and fully and completely believe in it….but I did.

    However, once it begins to crack and fall apart, you will have to paint even harder to keep the picture going.  I literally lost all my power to create something out of nothing.  When my father's crimes came around once again…I didn't try to dream it differently.

     

  • What we sow, we Reap

    As the Justice System continues to fail, we are asked or challenged not to fail reality. 

    The Justice System takes an action and reduces it, like it is a magic maker, like it can take something that was done and undo it a little or a lot, to go easy on the 'first' time offender.  When we can't know that.  It may be the First Time Caught Offender.

    The Justice System we believe is for the victim, that the victim will see her perpetrators 'pay' for what they did, and in the end, nothing happens.  

    We have been told to leave it in the hands of Justice, when the hands of justice are incapable of seeing the crime and staying the course, in fact people have jobs that are based on reducing actions to aggravated assault, in changing a rape to be sentenced like a punch.

    They literally get paid to see that the crime isn't accounted for.

    The Court of the Land is set up to support the offenders, it has them 'innocent' until proven guilty, but does its best to NOT see reality, by reducing and plea bargaining down…in the end it proves them more innocent than guilty.  And while they do this, we the victims remain more guilty and less innocent. We are still damaged no matter what.

    Wouldn't it be nice if the victim could have plea bargained down the crime, to reduce the rape to just a slap on the face?  Wouldn't a slap from a 'friend' hurt just as bad?  We were not given the option then or now.

    I know the parents of the girl and even the parents of one boy, and I am not an objective bystander, for I have great sympathies for the girl…for the one who couldn't reduce her pain to a lesser degree, IT was forced upon her.

    Reality always stands strong in her world.

    What I have learned from walking the walk of Un-Reality that the Justice System guides you on, is that it isn't the final word on these boys or families; the Universe or God balances all slates.

    While the court of the land and those who get paid to turn rape into slaps, feel that they have the power, they have only a surface level power, a false sense of balancing the sheets.

    The Universe pays no never mind to what the court of the land is doing, what the 'Blessings' of the church is doing, the Universe knows the score and can't help but give back to them what they sow.

    We are not responsible for their punishment, it is not our job.

    Each boy has to live with what he did and if he didn't catch the lesson, another one is headed his way.  He may not learn this time, but no worries, his life will teach him in a million ways about what he has done.

    While the father feels rage and wanting to balance the scales, all it would do is add more evil to an already evil situation.  

    What makes more sense to me is to see them for who they are and tell the world.  Act like they are rapists, even if the law wants us to see only aggragated assault, see the rape.  Know that they have energies inside of them that hurts girls.

    We are challenged not to change our minds as the law did.

    We are challenged not to delete away their actions.

    We are challenged to walk in reality and stand with the girl's truth.

    Unlike animals we Force ourselves to not see and not respond to the evil we experienced, to reduce it to a lesser degree and continue on as if nothing has happened.

    What messes most with the psyche and minds of victims IS that life continues on unchanged, when their whole world fell apart.

    We see the law of the land reduce and change and return the boys to a 'normal' life, while clearly their actions are screaming something is wrong with me.

    And there is something wrong with us if we too don't get their message. We too are held responsible for our responses. Are we treating them like hurt people?  Like someone who needs to be removed from society?  Or, will you 'forgive' and see them as normal.

    What another great example of why evil continues on with so many knowing.  There is no one connected to this case that doesn't understand and know that multiple rapes occurred, and yet with money and pleas, and a "No Contest" decree all that happens is 30 days in jail, but AFTER Christmas.

    Did you all know, that "No Contest" means guilty? But there are other added bonus attached…some may be that the Injured Party can't sue for damages etc.

    It is all a word game and exchange of words and sadly the meanings don't follow.  For no matter what you call the action, the action stands unchanged.  You simply can't reduce an action after it already happened.

    Reducing reality is only done in the minds of those who believe it can happen, but it changes nothing in reality. 

    Insanity is believing you can.

    What is so tragic is that the girl gets left with an insane reaction to a real crime.  

    When the law of the land responds this way, what recourse are you left with?

    At some point we will catch on that changing reality with words doesn't work…it isn't supporting the victims, but it works really slick on the offenders.  

    Why do they get a second chance and a clean slate, when she doesn't?  

    She only gets one reality….One Verse of what happened, she isn't allowed to change it.  Nor can we.

    We only can think it different than it was.

    We can each tell a story, but reality moves on unchanged.

    Reality is supported by the power of Universe, never underestimate its balancing sheet, it is impeccable….it is the all seeing and the all knowing.

    All we have to focus on is our own slate…what we sow, we reap.

     

  • Wishing is a train out of Reality.

    Forceful kindness is a phrase I had used to describe how some may take your power, how they keep pushing kindness to make you believe or feel something…it isn't just kindness, it is kindness with an agenda.

    Kindness that is trying to change your mind.

    Kindness that runs over your feelings.

    Kindness that sounds one way but feels completely different.

    Kindness that wants something.

    Kindness with an abusive attitude, for it is trying too hard to convince you…it is kind.

    I have been given many aspects of my mother appearing and reappearing time and time again, showing me OR rather allowing me to see that which I thought was one thing, was literally the opposite, and I am getting wiser and catching the lessons, grabbing on to the falsehood and forced kindness in order for me to 'do something'.

    The manipulation and delivery sounds so nice, empathetic, understanding, with a 'reason' behind it.

    My latest delivery came in the form of "I am going to help you"…which actually boiled down to….I am helping myself.

    My boss said she was bringing in 'help' for me after a long Monday, by the time I was ready to bundle the mail and head out on Tuesday the help turned into a person who was there to make sure I didn't go into overtime for the week.  And since it appeared that my hours would balance out, all help was removed.

    The daily struggle on very heavy package days don't matter, unless it happens to be a Friday, and it looks like I am on the verge of overtime.

    What I told her is that don't pretend to 'help' me, when all you really are focused on is your spread sheet of hours.  I understand and I get it.  Your main job is to see that we don't go over hours.  You can't be empathetic or helpful, you have to manage hours.  Just say it.  Just be forthright and say it.  Don't call it 'helping me' when you are actually helping your self.

    I truly get it and accept, that the Post Office can't offer help, it has to watch its bottom line.  I am not upset about that.

    I am upset with the way my boss tried to sell me help, when it was really for herself.

    If someone is going to help you, it will feel like help.  It didn't feel like she was helping me, but helping herself and I told her so.

    She wanted to appear, helpful and empathetic, when the Post Office doesn't allow for it.  I wasn't going to appear helped when it didn't help me.

    I believed the first night she indeed could help me.  I was relieved.  I was disappointed on the second day, when she changed the type of help she could give me.  And in the passing hours felt the help totally disappear…and felt it, and expressed it quite expressively.

    Some may challenge me and say it was being insubordinate, but what I was actually doing was calling her on her false delivery.

    I told her, "For me, please don't say you are going to do something and then not do it, make promises you can't deliver or are even capable of doing.  Don't make it seem like you are going to help me, when you can't.  I would prefer you say Nothing UNTIL you can.  If it isn't possible, I get it.  Just call it saving overtime and not help."

    I am way okay with the reality of how things are.  I am way not okay with someone playing in front of them trying to make me believe that which isn't possible.

    I understood that I too wanted to believe in help that wasn't possible.

    I own my part, my believing and wanting it…so I grabbed on.

    We both took a day and a half ride on Make Belief….and in the end I was disappointed.

    I was disappointed I believed in that which wasn't possible…a train ride out of reality and I was let down.  Let down right where I started, overwhelmed with the work at hand….wishing for help.

    Wishing is a place that isn't reality…

    Wishing is what comprised my whole childhood.

    Wishing things were different…

    It took me a whole day to get back to acceptance.

    Accepting what is…accepting that I will be overwhelmed for the next two weeks, and that no help will be coming.  I am okay, once I get back to reality and let the wishing go…

    Wishing is a train out of reality.

     

     

     

     

  • Knows you can….

    We believe that courage and fearlessness will arrive before we do something; that it is an actual muscle like thing that comes crawling into our body and boom, we now have courage.

    But courage isn't like that, nor is being fearless. 

    Courage is knowing you are in fear and shaking and trembling and feeling like a small child could push you over, and you keep going.

    Courage and strength doesn't arrive first. It actually settles into you after you faced your biggest fears, said what you thought you could never say, do what you felt was impossible to happen.  It comes After.

    Which seems like that is backwards, but courage comes afterward, for you look back at what you actually did. What you said and how you didn't die….or faint or whatever, You did it. 

    It is the act of doing what you don't feel you have the strength or the courage to do…But you do it anyway….that's when you see this psyche muscle there…courage.

    It isn't like love….it arrives after you need it.  It is like a cheerleader waiting on the other side of the river of turmoil and waiting to embrace you….it doesn't carry you across.

    I am thinking codependency carries….courage waits and cheers, beckoning you to be brave, to walk with shaky legs, to talk through tears and sobs….that is courage.

    Courage doesn't look like we may have it pictured, like it is strong and calm and wise and cool looking, and all put together.

    For me, courage was swear words and jagged sobs, it was putting up hands when my mother came to hug, after being silently away for 5 months after her husband was exposed as being a pedophile.

    Courage was saying no.

    Courage for me was walking into her home, reigning in my rage to the point of ONLY hollering and not pummeling her.  Courage was saying what I had to say to ears that were unable to hear or be empathetic.

    Courage had me walking out, knowing that she couldn't mother me…courage was mothering me myself.

    Courage was sitting on a path not knowing where it led, but going anyway.  Courage was to be without a plan and being okay.

    Courage was accepting what is, when it turned my belly into heaving sobs.

    Courage wasn't pretty or perfect, it wasn't calm and peaceful, but raw ugliness at times…that looking back were beautifully represented in their honesty.

    Courage is doing what you have never done before to get to a place you have no idea that you need to go.

    Courage is blindly living on a pinhead of time, where nothing is familiar and no one is ahead of you…it is you and the time ticking in your life.

    Courage is surrendering the pattern you have followed to strike out on your own, creating as you go; one shakey step at a time.

    Courage beckons and you say yes…in the exact condition you are in. It like God, and only accepts originality.  It only wants you just as you are in this moment of time.  You are perfectly perfect….it waits…go toward it…it is on the other side of what ever you feel is impossible…just head in and know you are not alone. Courage is watching, cheering and knows you can.

     

  • More power than the Source

    Today as I rode around, the thoughts kept coming back to me, that what we mostly argue about is not the truth, BUT how we each see it.

    We all are circling around the outer layers of life and dancing on the edges, not wanting to hurt, disrupt or destroy the lives of folks we know…so we don’t look upon the truth.

    All our discussions as far as I can remember are not really even based upon what is fact or what is fiction, but rather what do we do with it?

    Reality lounges around while the majority of people are more worried about HOW the truth will affect another, but pay no never mind about the truth itself. 

    There never was a dispute in my family that my father abused, but the main contention is how we all dealt with it or how we were bound and determined, it would not ruin their lives….

    The abuse got lost in the wake of the potential disruption of their lives.  The topic wasn’t about the abuse, but rather how they could get back to their normal lives.

    It is like keeping the conversation and party going after a bomb went off inside of your home/family.

    Or in the FALC, ‘believing the bomb never went off’ while sitting in the rubble after the explosion.  Trying not to feel and see all the blown out holes…for if you do, you will not make it to Heaven one day.

    To me Hell is living in a blown out family believing in thoughts it is all forgiven and forgotten and it is normal.

    The thoughts are the focus here, and the faith in believing them are much more important than what literally happens when abuse goes off like a bomb in your home.

    My years of writing have been trying to get them to see…oh they see, but they have more faith in their thoughts surrounding the truth than the truth.

    It is like believing in the smoke while not seeing the fire.

    Or maybe believing that the smoke can change the fire…it has more power than the Source.

     "You can't search for truth within a system of beliefs"  (Unknown, but shared with me by Sarah) 

  • I am Lens Free

    When you write your story on a blog you are offering up the opportunity for others to plunge themselves into your story, to come in and walk awhile in your life.

    It is amazing the types of responses you get from others when you display your life on a blog.

    Some come in and bare some of our pain, add bits of wisdom and cheer us on.  These experienced travelers lend us their strength that helps us continue forward.  These cheerleaders are priceless. 

    And the other half or maybe three fourths are out to make our truth into lies by showing us their side.

    What is a lie to one side seems to be the truth to the other.

    That is why there are two sides.

    And the truth stands alone.  However, depending upon which side you are standing on you will look upon it differently.  Very few will face the truth head on.

    What I didn’t know in the beginning is that the reader is made to explore their own lives and feel if what you say is true for them or not.

    That half of writing is reading.

    The reading part I wasn’t paying attention to, for I was the writer part.  I didn’t know how the reader would feel reading what I wrote and I never paid attention to that and still won’t.

    I am not writing for the reader’s ease or comfort or even their understanding.  I am writing for me.  What I am doing is offering a view of my online journal to all who chose to read.

    It validates my life to put it in writing, for I am in a sea of known strangers who can’t seem to understand me, and if I didn’t have this space to connect to, sometimes I would feel like I am disconnected and floating in space.

    I need this connection to anchor me to me.

    You fail to realize how much your life gets anchored by others, until there is no place to hook into. 

    In the beginning it felt like I was the only one who was seeing reality with my view.  I was looking with eyes unshielded and others had these weird lenses that contorted even simple things into complex issues.

    They looked at reality through the lenses of family and religion, and if it didn’t fit that mold, it was reconfigured.

    I took off the glasses of family and religion, setting them aside, and life took on whole different view.

    For the first time I could see life outside of the frames of religion and family.  I could see independently.

    I no longer had to make reality fit into their rules and traditions; instead life got to flow free.

    It didn't have to work for family or for the religion, it just had to be.

    It was amazing and scary and horrific.  To now see what I hadn’t seen with the lenses on.

    I can tell when people read my story with the lenses on or with the lenses off. 

    I am writing without a lens…and can’t help how others see it.

    I just know that you can change my story to say something else if you are wearing the lenses of family or the lenses of the FALC.

    It matters and it will change how you view me.

    But what doesn’t change is how I view myself, for I am lens free!