I M Perfect lady

Tag: shame

  • 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.

  • Shamelessly Me

    “Yoga Makes you you” is what Bikram says near the end of the 90 minutes of yoga, and until today I had always envisioned a new me.

     

    Today I realized that I get to be me minus the shame.

     

    Shame was my inner state of being.

     

    Shame colored the lenses with which I seen myself in the world, or felt myself in the world, I didn’t leave home shameless; I was filled to the brim with feelings of shame, in shame of being me.

     

    In shame of being me, yet I didn’t fully know the cause or when the seed was planted, it seemed I came this way.

     

    Now, I know better, the seed was planted by my father and fertilized by my mother in her reaction to me.

     

    It wasn’t until I read the book “Hannah’s Gift”  by Maria Housden that it affirmed my belief, that depending upon the way my mother handled the facts it would directly affect me.

     

    The tragedy of abuse, of incest, of being raped by your father, is it is bad enough his treatment of you, but then to have a mother do nothing compounds the shame.

     

    Her lack of doing anything to move away from that man locked me in my closet of shame.

     

    I lived there for 51 years.

     

    Today in yoga I finally felt free from the shame I carried about being an abused me.

     

    “Fake it ‘til you Make it” quote came to mind as I looked back upon my last 5 years, I literally forced myself to stand tall, when inside I was shrinking in shame.

     

    To walk a walk of one with no shame hasn’t been easy. To stand and believe in myself against all enemies both foreign (strangers) and domestic (family), to put myself out there all bruised and beaten claiming my rights to be me.

     

    I didn’t know if I was writing my death sentence, if I would survive, but I knew for sure if I stayed in the closet of shame I would have.

     

    I have been out of the closet for 5 ½ years and today was the first time I felt it is my right.

     

    It is my right to live shamelessly me!

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  • Annihilated in a Balloon!

    I could envision my self as a little girl and how she sits holding out her hands in shame again, for in them should be love and all she sees is fear.

     

    Fear and terror are in her hands.

     

    It feels like it is her responsibility to change that over to love, and no matter what she does or how hard she tries, what she tells her self, all that lay in her hands is fear.

     

    She is not good enough; she is unworthy, something is wrong with her, for she can’t get it right.

     

    Shame on you!

     

    I was totally confused and lost in the thoughts that fear and shame were tightly woven within me. 

     

    I was ashamed and in fear.

     

    When I pictured a young girl sitting there with fear in her hands and so shameful that she couldn’t change the feelings, it occurred to me, that ‘my little girl’ didn’t even have pictures in her head to know where the fear came from.

     

    She had feelings but no road map on how they got there.

     

    As thoughts came and went during the day yesterday, it came to me that my father changed my feelings I did not!

     

    A line in a song, “A little girl was waiting for her daddy one day…” came into my mind. 

     

    I was waiting for a daddy and who came was a man who hurt me. 

     

    He changed from being my daddy and so did my daddy feelings.

     

    In its place are bad man feelings and I can’t change them back.

     

    The tragedy is that I had love, trust and faith in my hands, and they quickly disappeared and terror took its place, a sleight of hand, a bad card trick, and I got left holding the terror card.

     

    I left the scene of the crime while the crime was taking place, but my body recorded the changes with feelings.

     

    Now as a little girl when she sees her ‘daddy’ and feels terror and she doesn’t understand why?

     

    Certainly something is so very wrong with her. 

    Shame on you!

     

    My whole body felt such utter relief to know that it wasn’t me who changed my feelings about my father, and it isn’t me that can change them back.

     

    It is up to him.

     

    My feelings will be stuck in fear unless and until he presents to me a man who acts like a dad.

     

    I am not responsible I didn’t do nothing wrong. 

     

    I was just a little girl who was waiting for her daddy that is all.  That is all…

     

    A little girl holding Love in her hands…that is all.

     

    There is no shame in that.

     

    I somehow felt I had to hide my fear; I was ashamed of my feelings.

     

    The near miss encounter with my mother, lunged me back into the feelings I had as a little girl, it brought me back to the feelings I had and still have today.  Nothing has changed within my body.  It is incredible that it registers the same.

     

    It is puzzling, how the feelings are similarly intense for her as with him.

     

    Somehow I felt shamed by her for my feelings I had for him.

     

    Disappointing her, her disproval reigned supreme as my number one thing I didn’t want to do. 

     

    Keeping her dream alive, “a longed for family” a father for her kids, I was guilty of not feeling the dream, yet I tried.

     

    Looking back at my life in this awkward review, I feel my life instead of see it; it was like I lived in a balloon that I carried.

     

    Up in the balloon I could pretend to feel what I didn’t feel.

     

    In the balloon, I lived annihilated from my true feelings.

     

    A life of pretend in a balloon, which never touched my body, for the string that held it away from me was called shame and fear.

     

    In order to get back to my body, I had to travel backwards and feel what I could bear to feel.

     

    That day in that dinner, without a balloon to protect me, I felt the electrical charge of fear wrapped around in a colorful ribbon of shame.

     

    With my big girl awareness and reality’s support, along with a friend named Ann, I felt what I needed to feel, the awkwardness of a child in fear sitting in shame.

     

    Shame is exposing your feelings of fear!

     

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    I had this quilt at the Gallery for sale and I took it back. For as I look at it, you can see  how she has to now live.  In the presence of her family she was made to live removed from her feelings….and if you see it from her view, she had to keep her real feelings away from her self, annihilated in a balloon! 

  • Associating with My Truth

    I have been fighting my body for so long, fighting with the feelings I have inside, tormenting myself as I struggle to not do, what it wants to do.

     

    I fought my body to be close to my parents.

    I fought my body to respond better to my parents.

    I fought my body to feel comfortable with my family.

     

    I was frustrated it couldn’t just relax, be normal, chill, and be a normal kid, a loving warm child.

     

    It was like there was an inbred system that didn’t respond correctly to the outside.

     

    It blew cold when it should have blown warm.

    It then blew warm when it should have blown cold.

     

    I felt best when I was far from my family. That is odd to know of yourself.  I could then relax and be myself.

     

    I am a freak of nature, for I don’t have the loving warm comfortable feelings I am supposed to have with family, mine are replaced with a cold standoffish chill. 

     

    So, I had to pretend what wasn’t within me ‘naturally’.

     

    The day that my father was exposed as a pedophile was the day I stopped pretending.  The cold fear within me was not unnatural, it was natural, and I was okay.

     

    I was okay within me. My feelings and my body were acting perfectly.

     

    I am perfectly okay and natural as an abused child can be.

     

    It is perfectly natural to fear those who harm you.

     

    There is annihilation between body/feelings and you when you are abused, and perhaps that is the real meaning of disassociation, we left our feelings behind.

     

    It was either annihilate the feelings or annihilate the parent.

     

    If you annihilate the parent you are out in the cold….

     

    To live in complete annihilation from your feelings and your body, is to live half alive.

     

    There came a fork in the road where I knew the cost that came with my self annihilation, the cost was me and many other little girls to follow. 

     

    When I didn’t speak up in fear of that man, he continued on.

     

    I was the imposter, I was the pretender, I was unnatural, and I went against my feelings to fit in.  I will not do that any more.  I will fit out and be shunned for associating with my truth.

     

     

     

  • Freedom in Healing.

    Yesterday I felt the sorrow of not going back, of being forever outside, being stuck in a new life upon which there is no return.

     

    That my inner truths and feelings will not change, and I don’t have the magic to make it happen, they sit there rock solid unmoving, unshakeable.

     

    I felt like I was riding shotgun to these feelings, like I am riding along behind them and have to act accordingly.

     

    Even if my inner wishes and desires are to go against them, I am weak where they are strong.

     

    These truths are not of my making, I didn’t dream them up to make my life difficult, to stay away from weddings, and forgo all family activities.

     

    The makings of these truths came in ways not many care to know or acknowledge; they forget that I am not the maker of these truths, but the carrier of them.

     

    It is like I am carrying a disease that I didn’t invent, but yet seen as the magician and the creator. 

     

    That I am the one who started this whole thing and now that I have had my ‘fun’ with it, just get rid of it and be ‘normal’ again.

     

    It still catches me unaware that they still think it is me that is the real trouble, that if only I would just stop sprouting this garbage than a normal family I would have.

     

    Then once again I could rejoin them in celebrations instead of wanting to be in exile.

     

    That I am the one who wants to stay away, NOT that there is actually something to stay away from.

     

    That I am enjoying this new role, this new life, the knower of my unchangeable truths, that I prefer to live estranged, that I decided this is a new me choice for me.

     

    If only that were true, that one day I simply decided that my old life didn’t work anymore and I set out to find a new me.

     

    What they fail to appreciate is the fact that I was unaware and blind to the abuse in our home, that I built a life upon a false foundation. 

     

    When the foundation crumbled, so did I, I had a break down of me.

     

    In the million pieces of me that lay shattered, I had to find a way to make a new me.

     

    The last five years isn’t an experiment or fad, it isn’t a temper tantrum or something I can set aside for a wedding, it is the way I healed.

     

    I healed inside by setting up boundaries.

    I healed by acknowledging my abuse, my abuser, and those who support abuse by not standing against it.

     

    I healed myself putting myself in exile.

     

    And exiled from this family I will stay, it is the choice of being healed or abused.

     

    I felt the sadness of this exile, the aloneness, the being seen as different and difficult, and it is.

     

    Yet I no more can go back into abuse than I can let go of the freedom in healing.

     

    "I must be willing to give up what I am in order to become what I will be."
      ~ Einstein

     

  • Feminine Self

    My 40th yoga session followed right behind a two-hour Oprah interview with 4 sexual predators and a book I was reading called “The Flying Boy” by John Lee.

     

    As I began yoga and on the Standing Head to Knee pose, as I went to pick up my left leg, which is weak and unbendable the thought came to me, “my feminine side was crippled or broken” and tears began to flow.

     

    It was like my body felt relieved that I could acknowledge this.  I felt such compassion for the wounded feminine parts of me as I lovingly stood there on one leg holding my left/feminine side.

     

    This alone would be a huge gift on day 40, but on we go. 

     

    I get to the Balancing Stick pose and as I raise my hands above my head and I begin to breathe, another profound thought comes in, “I am only responsible for love and trust,” and again tears come and a huge lightness to my shoulders.  As I was breathing in I was feeling only being responsible for bringing trust and love to my relationship with my abuser, my father.

     

    I am innocent of being responsible or guilty for the abuse.

     

    I then proceed to hold the pose of Balancing Stick for all but the last one, for on that one, again I was eager to tell you about this, and lost the connection.

     

    Those are two gifts this yoga gave me today, the realization that my feminine side is damaged, but with good reason, and that I am free of carrying the weight of guilt and shame or blame.  My shoulders literally felt lighter yet again.

     

    As I went into the floor Separate Head to Knee, where my left hip usually screams, I told it, “it is okay I understand your hurt,” and I was able to do this without pain, not perfect, not farther, but with ease and more tears. 

     

    It is like I am recognizing the physical manifestations this body has held.

     

    An overwhelming sadness came in knowing that I have lived so long without this side, this softness, this trusting openness, how hard and stiff it has left me, struggling to be stronger, tougher, when what I needed was to be more relaxed and soft. 

     

    Bikram is right, “you have no idea what yoga can do for you, Yoga makes you you.”

     

    As one predator stated, “I killed the person she could have been.”  And he is right.  But they only win if we don’t bring her back!  I intend to return to my full healthy loving trusting feminine self!

     

  • What a Grateful Sound.

    Iron John, by Robert Bly.

     

    Gaining a Four-Legged Horse

     

    A remarkable detail that leaps out of this scene and demands some interpretation is the three-legged horse that the boy finds in the stable.  This three-legged horse doesn’t feel like good news when we see it standing there, and it obviously feels worse when one rides it.  We might look at what a horse could be in such a story as this, and what the difference might be between three legs and four.

     

    “Four” is complete in that it stands for the four-gated city, the four directions, the four rivers of Paradise, the four seasons, the four letters of the Holy Name, the four horses of the sun carriage, and the four strings of the sistrum.  The old rhyme goes:

     

    One for sorrow,

    Two for mirth,

    Three for wedding,

    Four for birth.

     

    Three, on the other hand, falls a little short.  A three-gated city is not impressive as a four gated city, and a planet with only three directions would seem odd to us.  Dawn, noon and sunset add up to three parts of a good day, but night is left out.  Fall, winter, and summer would not be acceptable to farmers, for they need spring. So we have to think that something important is gone.

     

    As for the horse, its associations range over heaven and earth. The horse has reminded human beings of ocean waves, of the dead, of thunder, of sexual energy, particularly sexual energy of men, of the Great Mother, for Lady Godiva rode on a horse, of glory and kinship, and of divine energies, such as the four horse of the Apocalypse.

     

    The horse, when contrasted with its rider, reminds men and women of the animal side of human beings, and of the body.  The rider stands for the intelligence or intellect or mind, and the horse stands for the animal desires and instincts and energies that have their home there.

     

    I am going to consider the fourth leg as a shamed leg.  I assume that the boy’s animal body has been crippled by shame, his hobbledehoy walks so because it has a shamed leg.

     

    We have already spoken of shame and its power.  Shame can come in from many sources; from parents who deliberately shame us in order to make us more controllable, from addicted parents who shame us as a side affect of their own addiction, or from peers who shame us to get rid of some of their shame.  Asking a parent for a response and not receiving it cause enough for shame; we can ingest a shame-bound parent, and receive shame by inheritance; every invasion, whether sexual abuse or physical abuse, produces in five minutes shame that lasts for thirty years.  Simply making up a false personality to please our parents can generate shame for a lifetime.  The shaming we receive from irritable school teachers, manic Catholic priests, or our own internalized perfectionist increases the store of shame that gets poured into our hollow leg, and each drop of shame increases our commitment to isolation.  We attend secret meetings of apology, submission, resentment, and collaboration.

     

    When we were very tiny, our horse had all four legs, and it joyfully lived in whatever sensualities it could gallop to.  By the time a child in our culture is twelve, one of the legs at least will be crippled by shame, whether it lives in a ‘dysfunctional’ household or not.

     

    None of us knows at twelve how to heal our horse of shame.  The story suggest that a boy’s horse needs to be brought to an older man or mentor, or, lifting a scene to the imaginative level, it needs to be brought to the Wild Man. We take the nag out of the barn, where “the older boys” have left it for us; we ride to the edge of the forest; and then we ask the Wild Man for a better horse.  We know we have to return it, but just to experience what it would be like to ride a horse without a crippled leg even for a few minutes, is worth it all.

     

               Robert Bly

     

    I love how he shows how our damaged psyche is like riding a cripple horse, how shame damages the leg of our body, how we then are crippled.

     

    Imagine the impact we can wield to another human?

    The power of words and how we use them, the way shame is for controlling the other.

     

    I know that my words and my tactics as a ‘crippled mother’ myself, crippled my kids.

     

    As I heal my shame-crippled leg, I will no longer damage my children, and hopefully work at healing theirs.

     

    To hear the sound of a healthy horse galloping away as  your child leaves home, what a grateful sound.