I M Perfect lady

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  • Your children are sure to follow.

    "The Body Never Lies," by Alice Miller.

    ‎"Children cannot escape their own parents, so they cannot afford to see through them either. Blindness makes it possible to survive. This is the way the abuse of children has functioned since time immemorial. BLINDNESS AND FORGIVENESS ARE ESSENTIAL TO SURVIVAL. But at the same time they lead to repletion and they perpetuate cycles of cruelty."

    "To break through this vicious circle we need to understand that so-called love cannot survive abuse, deception, and exploitation without seeking new victims. And if it requires new victims, it is no longer love but at best the longing for love. Only UNFLINCHING REALIZATIONS OF ONE'S OWN PAST REALITY, OF WHAT ACTUALLY HAPPENED CAN BREAK THROUGH THE CHAIN OF ABUSE. IF I KNOW AND CAN FEEL WHAT MY PARENTS DID TO ME WHEN I WAS TOTALLY DEFENSELESS, I NO LONGER NEED VICTIMS TO BEFOG MY AWARENESS. I no longer need to re-enact what happened to me and take it out on innocent people because now I know what happened. And if I want to live my life consciously, without exploiting others, then I must actively accept that knowledge." Alice

    What seems so clear, yet is so hard to wrap your brain around, is that a defenseless child is left without escape and in order to survive turns itself blind to what the parent is doing.  You mind will not allow you to SEE your parents.  Not 'remembering' what happened, allows you to live in a fanatasy. And in this so called, 'loving home' you then begin to grow and develop awkwardly.

    You set into place the opposite screen to what is.

    Love is abusive.

    Caring is neglectful.

    Your 'truth' is backwards…you become authentically dysfunctional and can't even see it.

    It is my belief, that we then hurt our children in order to keep 'love' alive.  Love means there must be a victim and a perpetrator.

    The fog of not seeing who my parents were, also swirled and darkened my access to emotions that were what they truly were.

    Meaning, I didn't have access to moving away from fear, and even more tragically, I didn't have emotions of warmth and kindness that moved me towards goodness.

    Not having access to warmth and kindness, kept me pushed back on the inside, not feeling drawn to children inside.

    My insides were all wrong.  

    My arms could wrap around them…but not my heart.

    My heart was used for clinging to abuse….so oddly it is, if you could see your children as hurtful, unkind, etc, then they could be loved.

    Not sure if you all can follow this, but it makes bitter sense to me.

    What gratitude I have for the fog lifting 7 years ago…and to see in harsh reality my parents and what they did to defenseless children unable to escape; I then was able to walk right-side up.

    Walking and pushing back from abuse and things that hurt me…allowed me to feel warmth toward my children…to feel their innocence and my deranged mind.

    For all the mothers out there who have doubts and glimpses of their childhood terrors, and are unable to see straight through to what their mother did…You will enact her emotional pattern.

    You will love what hurts…and be pushed back and away from kindness, love, peace and joy.  You will shut out the Light side of life, while stoking the fires of hell…and not even know it, for the blindness of surviving your childhood blocks you from seeing.

    Growing up means taking down the survival glasses and facing the reality of your childhood, feeling and seeing the defenselessness of being you in their home.

    The blocking out abuse lenses are also blocking you from seeing your innocence.  

    If you can't see you as an innocent child, your children will never wear that banner…

    It all falls down to pick one.

    You or your parents are innocent or to blame, for the childhood abuse.

    Depending upon what path you take; your children are sure to follow.

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  • Era of Individuality.

    While listening to Sir Ken Robinson reading his book, "The Element" I was struck many times by the way he saw things in a totally new light, how instead of reforming something that is broken, it is best to transform or evolve into a totally different idea.

    He was speaking about education and how it is modeled after the fast food industry, how every thing is standardised…no surprises, everything matches and conforms.  Imagine?  Our education system has followed the fast food industry, where no imagination or individual passion and ideas are allowed; the main focus is to do well on the standardized test, caring less of the value left inside the child.

    And the standardized test making people and industry is booming…while our kid's minds are being bent to do well on their tests…and their natural instinctual abilities are being ignored.

    He also compared the school day to that of a factory, where bells ring to end a shift or begin one.  Where all like models (made in year 1958) are put together, where each teacher adds one thing to the student, like an assembly line.  

    Some children do well in this conveyor like system, but there are many others whose passion is completely ignored and not allowed anywhere in the school factory for it doesn't fit into the fast food model.

    It seems that the natural talents and abilities, the passions and desires to express what you love to do is being completely overlooked, that the child has to fit into the standardized class, leaving behind the very things that excite him.

    You have to leave behind who you are to fit into this system.

    He spoke of visionary schools, who are doing education completely different, who are teaching backwards it seems.  The teachers take direction from the students…seeing the student, her desires and talents and her interests, and expanding on those…allowing the child to flourish that which is already organically there.  

    He also gave an example of a Kindergarten Class set in the middle of an Old Aged Home…glass walls that didn't quite reach the ceiling, so the children's voices could be heard.  How the elderly walked by with interest for the first few days, and then would stop and ask, what the children were learning.  "We are teaching them to read," the teacher said.  "Can I help?" the elderly asked, "I know how to read."

    The Elderly and Child formed a Reading Buddy System….and the elderly drug intake almost lessened by half.  The child left kindergarten reading at a 3rd Grade level.  The children learned about death and grief, when their Reading Buddy's passed on.  The children also learned about life and history by talking to their Reading Buddy.

    Most of us born into these systems are not even aware of the cost of standardized learning…we simply never considered another way. Our own individualize way of being has never been allowed to grow…most don't even know it is there, for it is buried far beneath all that we had to learn and be in order to graduate.

    Years worth of standardized lesson piled upon our dreams…Often we hardly even caught a glimpse of our natural excitement, before it was squashed and pushed aside, for it didn't fit in.

    Not only do I see the standardized learning, but standardized religion or God learning…spiritual seeking etc.  We are taught about this subject, by having to fit into our parent's idea of who God is and what spirituality means.  We are not allowed to grow naturally into wonderment, but are instead taught the lay of the God land by weary disenchanted travelers (in my case).  

    I wasn't taught the wonders of God, but instead his wrath and what would happen if I didn't obey the rules etc.

    In my standardized religion there was no room from my questions or wonderment or disagreement…I had to conform into their system.

    This leads you to wonder how many other systems do we have in place that were created during the Industrial Age that are broken?

    You have to wonder how at one time they believed what was best for us was to all be the same. To learn and believe the same was a good thing…modeling us after what they deemed a perfect being.

    When born into an already operational system of conformity, we are naturally made to conform by the folks who have lived on this planet longer than us…we believe the natural way to be is to fit in…and there are awards and ribbons for being a good conformist, and their are punishments or nothing for those who don't.

    My way of raising my children began in the industrial era and I have transformed it into a totally free zone.

    I now mother to the individual…I no longer have a standardized religion that they have to fit into. In fact, I am trying to unearth their natural talents and dreams that I buried in my broken way of raising them.

    What is so striking, is that the systems are broken and oftentimes the parents themselves come with dysfunctional baggage.  What a maze our children have to navigate through in order to maintain or hold on to their inner passions. 

    Imagine the change our world would have if all systems were geared to serve passion, talent and natural abilities, desire, excitement and inner joy, from the seed of individual that is already planted there?

    How tragic it is that we have to run through an obstacle course that is set in place to steal this talent away…

    So much of the dis ease and un rest is that so many folks are not doing their natural talents, that their seeds are lying dormant undernourished…that they did conform and are fitting into the world, but dying inside.

    A very interesting overview of what we are teaching brand new seeds that arrive on the planet…we ignore the Element of who they are.

    I certainly hope this next Era is called the Era of Individuality.

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  • It came True for me.

    In a room today were three forces, joined over a common cause; healing victims, empowering victims, reversing the affects of trauma, abuse and being victimized…finding a way to weave together many sources and journeys…Victims helping Victims using the support of all connecting agencies.

    Coming together were three pathways…The law of the land, the victims advocate and me.

    All of us cared about the healing of the victims, knowing the affects that linger long after the trial, no matter the outcome…win or lose, the victim still has wounds and scars that the justice system can't touch.

    We all recognized the healing that begins with the truth being spoken, no matter if a trial is forthcoming, just finding a person to hear your story raises you from the level of shame to acceptance.

    Acceptance carries you to courage and courage allows for your truth to be spoken…and what you need is a very open ear.

    In the room were open ears, willing spirits, like minds, and a dream.

    A dream that one day the shame of being a victim will lessen, where we can all meet and openly share.  For victims to leave their solitary journeys of silence and speak.  

    To stop suffering alone, ashamed…to be able to know that what they feel or not feel is normal.  That they are perfectly perfect living the affects of abuse.  Being confused and lost is the cost of abuse.

    This seems to be the last closet where humanity is hiding, where souls are suffering in silence, and shame the lock on the door.

    All three of us are equally as frustrated and perplexed as to what will open the door of abuse.

    What can we do to offer a path of empowerment and healing that overcomes the cloak of shame?

    How do you get such deeply hurting souls to expose secrets that their very survival depended on to keep silent?  How do we ask them to reveal to us who hurt them, when who hurt them is who they love and call family?

    Inside of family homes lives the monster that they have always called dad or uncle or brother or mother etc..how do we unhook them or ask them to open that door?  When that most likely will lead to them becoming estranged…How to heal…when healing means losing all that you have?

    It seems they are sitting on the bottom and we are asking to pull even that away…leaving them in a free fall…to where?

    I know this journey…I know what we are asking…And I know the cost, but I also know the reward.

    For four hours we talked and learned from each other and a dream was planted.

    Ironically or not, it is Martin Luther King Day….and it came to me after leaving the Dial-Help office…"I have a Dream."

    I have a dream to demolish the closets of shame that surround victims.  To empower each victim to tear down the walls…and to live free.

    Free and unashamed.

    Free and not guilty.

    Free in the truth of their lives.

    Learning not only about abuse, but how to unscramble its affects…learning to find the self they lost and hid away, in shame because of being abused.  

    I have a dream that all abused kids will return to their natural states of innocence…I believe in this dream, for it came true for me.

     

     

  • The Gift is in the Present.

    I am in a book club reading Mark Nepo's book, "The Book of Awakening".  It is written so that we read one reading per day.

    Today's reading I love.

    "So often we anticipate a reward for the uncovering of truth.  For effort, we expect money and recognition.  For sacrifice and kindness we secretly expect acceptance and love. For honesty, we expect justice.  Yet as we all know, the life of experience unfolds with a logic all its own.  And very often, effort is seen, and kindness is embraced, and the risk of truth is held as the foundation of how humans relate. However, the reward for breathing in not applause but air, and the reward for climbing is not a promotion but new sight, and the reward for kindness is not being seen as kind, but the electricity of giving that keeps us alive."

    "It seems the closer we get to the core of all being, the more synonymous the effort and its reward.  Who could have guessed?  The reward for uncovering the truth is the experience of honest being.  The reward for understanding is the peace of knowing.  The reward for loving is being the carrier of love.  It all becomes elusively simple.  The river's sole purpose is to carry water, and as the force of the water deepens and widens the riverbed, the river fulfills its purpose more.  Likewise, the riverbed of the heart is worn open over time to carry what is living."

    "All this tells us that no amount of thinking can eliminate the wonder and pain of living.  No wall or avoidance or denial- no cause or excuse- can keep the rawness of life from running through us.  While this may at times seem devastating, it is actually reassuring, because while the impermanence of life, if fixed on, can be terrifying, leaving us preoccupied with death, the very same impermanence, if allowed its infinite frame, can soothe us with the understanding that eve the deepest pain will pass."  Mark Nepo

    What I love so much about this is that I used to live solely in the reward system…and yet the rewards were often times not forthcoming.  I thought that I was giving wrongly, so I gave more and tried harder.  

    What I failed to realize is that the universal system had a logic all of its own…simply called experience.

    I was so focused on my just reward and waited and fretted and worried and hated and judged and stressed, that I long forgot the feeling of the experience.

    I lived, thought and acted all for a future reward.

    I literally gave for love and acceptance.  And when I stopped giving, the love and acceptance dried up.  It was an awful way to be loved…for it all depended upon me giving and they didn't have to give, all they had to do was give me love and acceptance. 

    I have said I was a whore for love and peace…and this is what it literally means.  I gave to get.

    When the justice system failed me and all the girls who were sexually abused by my father, it seemed that the universal logic was broke. 

    Yet our honesty worked supremely well. We got to experience how honesty and integrity feels.  

    If we put our focus on the 'just' reward, we would be sorely disappointed.  If you put your focus on the feelings and experiences of being honest with your past, it feels amazing.

    I can't even begin to explain the difference between living in the system of rewards compared to living in experience.

    To have zero expectations…

    When you remove the reward, all you are left with is the experience.

    And the experience is solely the focus.

    As Eckhart Tolle says, there are only three ways to experience life…Enthusiasm, Enjoyment and Acceptance….He says nothing about reward.

    I love that there are no rewards in living…that the gift is in the present!

  • 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…

  • How It Feels

    I am reading "The Body Never Lies," again by Alice Miller.  

    What is really standing out to me this time around is the fact about feelings. Or the fact that it is more typical than not to not be aware of your true feelings.

    Alice writes, "Genuine Feelings are never a product of conscious effort. They are quite simply there, and they are there for a very good reason, even if that reason is not always apparent.  I cannot force myself to love or honor my parents if my body rebels against such an endeavor for reasons that are well-known to it.  But if I still attempt to obey the Fourth Commandment, then the upshot will be the kind of stress that is invariably involved when I demand the impossible of myself.  This kind of stress has accompanied me almost all my life.  Anxious to stay in line with the system of moral values I had accepted, I did my best to imagine good feeings I did not possess while ignoring the bad feelings I did have.  My aim was to be loved as a daughter.  But the effort was all in vain.  In the end I had to realize that I cannot force love to come if it is not there in the first place.  On the other hand, I learned that a feeling of love will establish itself automatically (for example, love for my children or love for my friends) once I stop demanding that I feel such love and stop obeying the moral injunctions impossed on me.  But such a sensation can happen only when I feel free and remain open and receptive to all my feelings, including the negative ones."

    "The realization that I cannot manipulate my feelings, that I can delude neither myself nor others, brought me immense relief and liberation.  Only then was I fully struck by the large number of people who (like myself) literally almost kill themselves in the attempt to obey the Fourth Commandment, without any consideration of the price this extracts both from their own bodies and from their children.  As long as the children allow themselves to be used this way, it is entirely possible to live to be one hundred without any awareness of one's own personal truth and without any illness ensuing from this protracted form of self-deception."

    "A mother who is forced to realize that the deprivations imposed on her in her youth make it impossible for her to love a child of her own, however hard she may try, can certainly expect to be accused of immorality if she has the courage to put that truth into words. But I believe that it is precisely this explicit acceptance of her true feelings, independent of the claims of morality, that will enable her to give both herself and her children the honest and sincere kind of support they need most, and at the same time allow her to free herself from the shackles of self-deception."

    "When most children are born, what they need most from their parents is love, by which I mean affection, attention, care, protection, kindness, and the willingness to communicate.  If these needs are gratified, the bodies of those children will retain the good memory of such caring, affection all their lives, and later, as adults, they will be able to pass on the same kind of love to their children. But if this is not the case, the children will be left with a lifelong yearning for the fulfillment of their initial (and vital) needs. In later life, this yearning will be directed at other people.  In comparison, the more implacably children have been deprived of love and negated or maltreated in the name of "Upbringing," the more those children, on reaching adulthood, will look to their parents (or other people substituting for them) to supply all the things those same parents failed to provide when they were needed most.  This is a normal response on the part of the body.  It knows precisely what it needs, it cannot forget the deprivations.  The deprivation or hole is there waiting to be filled."

    "The older we get, the more difficult it is to find other people who can give us the love our parents denied us. But the body's expectations do not slacken with age – quite the contrary!  They are merely directed at others, usually our own children and grandchildren.  The only way out of this dilemma is to become aware of these mechanisms and to identify the reality of our own childhood by counteracting the process of repression and denial.  In this way we can create in our own selves a person who can satisfy at least some of the needs that have been waiting for fulfillment since birth, if not earlier.  Then we can give ourselves the attention, the respect, the understanding for our emotions, the sorely needed protection, and the unconditional love that our parents withheld from us."

    "To make this happen we need one special experience; the experience of love for the child we once were.  Without it, we have no way of knowing what love consists of."  Alice Miller

    While I knew that having lived 46 years trying so hard to possess feelings of love and warmth toward my parents, and working at being a warmer person, it had never not once occurred to me that I wasn't the problem. That due to the lack of feelings of love didn't mean there was something the matter with me…but rather what I was trying to love.

    I remember having odd and horrifying realizations about my self, when the lack of deep caring and love didn't arise from me, towards my parents.  I would not even want to glance to long at this self that seemed to be so detached and cool.  For what child doesn't want to be with her parents?

    The double feelings that I had with the discovery that my father was a pedophile, was that I wasn't a broken love person.  I wasn't cold or detached…I wasn't living in a broken body and cold toward family…I wasn't damaged…but my family was.

    I am not sure I can tell you how it feels to believe you don't have access to warmth and caring or love towards parents…and feel you are damaged. That you arrived empty of that kind of love.  Yet I knew I could feel, but couldn't carry those feelings to my parents.

    It now gives me great peace to know I can't manipulate feelings…that emotions are natural responses, ones that come up without any assistance from me.  It leaves me in a neutral position taking the lead from my body.

    My body never lies…however, I have lied about my body.

    I have lived faking my feelings.

    Living a fake life.

    But no more.  Now, I simply agree with how It feels.

     

  • Wish For Your Self.

    What a great year of learning, again.  

    Lessons seemed to continually line up to serve to me… more of me; more freedom, more letting go, surrendering and allowing, more ways to be expressive, a deeper understanding, followed by affirmations of what doing the opposite would look like.

    I think I thought, that when I said I was going forth with love, peace and joy, like magic, that was what would follow.  Wrong.  

    Instead I was served up all of my relationships were no love, peace or joy existed, and asked to redo myself there.

    I was given opportunity after opportunity, sometimes many at a time, all clamoring for my attention…insatiable energies of need and control, that had kept me from peace or feelings of love or experiencing joy.

    What I believe lots of folks believe, is that they stay in the same place, but instead of feeling anxious, controlled, resentful, rage, anger, tight restraint…they will just work harder to feel different.

    To stay with same relationships, BUT feel differently about them.

    Feel more loving…will bring up love.  And to become peaceful where rebellious feelings explode…to dial down or to a different frequency.

    That isn't what real love, peace and joy is.

    That is denying what is there and forcing feelings.  Which is to have false feelings of love, peace and joy.

    Many believe you can simply just 'think' differently about an individual etc and like magic, feelings will change.   That your feelings are the problem within the relationship…not that the relationship itself is where the troubles lie.

    Seeing life differently is where the key lies.

    I am reading, "The Body Never Lies" by Alice Miller.  This is one of the first authors who addresses the child, instead of the parent…she sees abuse from the child's perspective and how the body feels and then how the child is made to 'feel different' in order to honor and love thy parents.

    She writes, "The parenting approach know as "Poisonous Pedogogy" breeds overly well adjusted individuals who can only trust the mask they have been Forced to wear because as children they lived in constant fear of punishment. "I am bringing you up in the way that is best for you" is the supreme principle behind this approach. "If I beat you or use words to torment and humiliate you, it is for all for your own good."

    "In this famous novel Fateless, the Hungarian writer and Nobel laureate Imre Kertesz describes his arrival at the Auschwitz concentration camp.  He was fifteen years old at the time, and he tells us in great detail how he attempted to interpet the many grotesque and appalling things he encountered on his arrival there as something positive and favorable for him.  Otherwise he would not have survived his own mortal fear."

    "Probably every child who has suffered abuse must assume an attitude like this in order to survive. These children reinterpret their perceptions in a desperate attempt to see as good and beneficial things that outside observers would immediately classify as crimes. Children have no choice.  They must repress their true feelings if they have no "helping witness" to turn to and are helplessly exposed to their persecutors. Later as adults lucky enough to encounter "enlightened witnesses," they do have a choice. Then they can admit the truth, their truth; they can stop pitying and "understanding" their persecutors, stop trying to feel their unsustainable, disassociated emotions, and roundly denounce the things that have been done to them.  This step bring immense relief for the body.  It no longer has to forcibly remind the adult self of the tragic history it went through as a child. Once the adult self has decided to find out the whole truth about itself, the body feels understood, respected, and protected."

    "I call the violent kind of "upbringing" abuse, not only because children are thus refused the right to dignity and respect as human beings but also because such an approach to parenting establishes a kind of totalitarian regime in which it is impossible for children to perceive the humilations, indignities, and disrespect they have been subjected to, let alone defend themselves against them. These patterns of childhood will inevitably then be adopted by their victims and used on their partners and their own children, at work, in politics, wherever fear and anxiety of the profoundly insecure child can be fended off with the aid of external power. It is in this way that dictators are born; these are people with a deep-seated contempt for everyone else, people who were never respected as children and thus do their utmost to earn that respect at a later stage with the assistance of the gigantic power apparatus they have built around them."

    "The sphere of politics is an excellent example of the way in which the hunger for power and recognition is never stilled.  It is insatiable, it can never be entirely satisfied. The more power these people have, the more they are spurred on to actions of compulsory repetition, restore the initial feelings of impotence they were trying to escape; Hitler is his bunker, Stalin in his paranoid fears, Mao in the final rejection by his people, Napoleon in exile, Milosevic in prison, Saddam Hussein in his mortifying fall from power. What impelled these men to abuse the power they had achieved to such a pitch that it ultimately plunged them into impotence and powerlessness?  I believe it was their bodies.  Their bodies sustained the knowledge of the impotence they felt in childhood; they stored such knowledge in their cells, and they set out to force their "owners" to face up to that knowledge. But the reality of their childhood instilled such fear in the hearts of these dictators that they preferred to wipe out whole peoples, to exterminate millions of human beings, rather than confront the truth – their truth."  Alice Miller

    I am reading this book for the second time, and it once again has a much broader meaning to me, than the first time around.  I am now able to see more potently the actual ways a child has to disregard its own body in order to survive, to look for 'positive' so not to drown in its own mortal fears…and how quickly an outsider can spot the crimes, while those within are unable to see.

    I have experienced the view of being an outsider and the quick slamming of the door behind me as I stood on the sidewalk, for the 'family unit' couldn't withstand the truth…mine and theirs.

    Their impotency against truth is what causes such insane behavior. Their lack of self power and worth has them snubbing outside…like that is where their truth lives…within us.

    You can berate me and kick me out of your life, but your truth, just as in the Dictators of the past did…but you are kicking us so as to NOT feel and own your own truth.

    I know that I have been kicked aside.  And it has nothing to do with me, but it has much more to do with the individual's fear of their own truths.  By keeping me out of their worlds, they like the 15 year old Hungarian Boy, keep their concentration camp a place of positive living…of love, peace and joy.

    I am so grateful that I was able to have the courage to see my own truth…

    What I didn't know, is that the most violent among us are those who are in mortal fear of seeing their childhoods in Reality's Light.

    That their violent behavior is to keep themselves from feeling the truth about their parents.

    So, as you go forth on this New Year's day, be careful what you seek for your self in 2012.

    If you seek, like I did, a life filled with love, peace and joy; you will first have to find all the places you have it wrong.  It has been 7 years of learning what isn't…in order for me to then set forth again.

    My wish for you is your own wish for your self.

     

     

     

     

     

     

  • Keep Silent

    In reading Melody Beatte's book, "Codependent No More"….I came upon these few sentences that explained so much to me.

    " Codependency is an emotional, psychological, and behavioral condition that develops as a result of an individual's prolonged exposure to, and practice of, a set of Oppressive Rules….Rules which prevent the OPEN EXPRESSION of FEELINGS as well as THE DIRECT DISCUSSION of personal and interpersonal problems."  Robert Stubby

    This explains the way the Church Doesn't deal with personal or interpersonal problems, for its members have had a prolonged exposure and have been taught to practice 'following' the rules makes you a good christian.

    The oppressive rules alone are not the culprit, but the long exposure…especially those who have been born in capitivity, where they never visited a world where you could openly express and discuss directly how you felt and what you thought.

    And certainly, under no conditions are you allowed to question the 'sins' or why you can't do this or that.  An oppressive environment for sure.  This bleeds down into the family homes, for it is preached to do so.

    I am finding that our family wasn't just weird like this, but that any family of the church has this same nature it is like the church's mission statement to teach codependency.

    Good members of the church are good codependents.

    Melody writes, "Earnie Larsen, another codependency specialist and pioneer in that field defines codependency as "those self-defeating, learned behaviors or character defects that result from a diminished capacity to initiate or to participate in loving relationships."

    Being unable to openly discuss personal feelings without being punished for it, is what makes us fake who we are.

    One of the oppressive rules of the church is "Honor thy Mother and thy father…" It cares not who they are or how they act, it is a RULE.

    In honoring them, you have to become disloyal to yourself. 

    Where does this leave a child?  

    From my experience, no personal stuff was ever discussed….not even the generic feelings, Let alone abuse.

    Just the very fact that we are indoctrinated into this society, and then abused…leaves a child lost, alone with no way out…

    The only way out is to leave…for a child is not allowed to speak, it is against the rules. 

    What is even more tragic, is that the love goes when you break the rules. So in order to keep the love, you have to keep silent.

     

  • I run, because you can’t……for my sister friend.

    “There are only two mistakes one can make along the road to truth; not going all the way and not starting.”

                 Buddha

     

    I felt the loneliness today of my Aunt who ran away.  A woman I never met, yet I feel we are one.

     

    I felt her sadness of being misunderstood and unknown, how her choice to save herself, sentenced her to a life alone outside of her family.

     

    Ostracized for escaping, for saving ourselves, for walking free of abuse, we are not cheered, no clapping, instead we are jeered with sarcasm.

     

    I never ever thought my harshest critics would be from my own family, they are forever punching the already weakened psyche.

     

    The Little girl within feels so sad, empty of words to make them see. 

     

    Today I wondered about my Aunt and her life, how she survived without contact from her family, yet like me the family she missed is the same one that brings her pain.

     

    The intellectual part of me understands that the energy they bring me isn’t healthy, but my heart yearns for acceptance, for understanding and even empathy.

     

    Like missing the stick that is poking you in the eye.

     

    I have more empathy for folks who are set aside because of who they are, parts of themselves they cannot change.

     

    Maybe because my Aunt disappeared and no one spoke her name that I want there to be words about me.

     

    Perhaps this blog is a way that I too will not just simply disappear without a trace.

     

    In the first few days of my father being accused of criminal sexual conduct, I wrote.

     

    I wrote in disbelief, I wrote the words to anchor myself somewhere, to hold me in the sea of grief.

     

    Writing is evidence of my journey.

     

    I have kept all written communications from my family as evidence. I know that is an odd word to use. 

     

    It was the evidence I needed to sort out which one of us was in reality and which one wasn’t.

     

    My mental mind fought a long hard battle up against reality and in reality there are written words from a family who is not cheering me.

     

    In as much as I want them to be cheering, what I needed more were their words of mental ness to shine the way out.

     

    Maybe in the end their shouts of sarcasm are cheering me forward.

     

    They are showing me there is nothing for me back there.

    They were showing me how not to be.

    Showing me how far I have come.

     

    I feel the energy of my runaway aunt; she joins me in spirit as I run along, lending me her courage and strength.  I feel the spirit of many little girls whose time ran out, who were too empty to begin, I run for you. 

     

    I run towards wholeness with truth at my side.

    I feel you with me as I run.

     

    The refrain “you are the wind beneath my wings” came to mind.

     

    I am so grateful I was able to run away.

    I am so not alone.

    All little girls everywhere who suffered like I, I run for you.

    I run, because you can’t.

     

     

     

  • Shattering Dream

    While commenting back and forth with Lynn C. Tolson, the Author of "Beyond the Tears", on facebook, it came to me why folks support the Coach and the Organization and not the abused boys…they don't want to lose that which they are a part of.

    Whether it is to be a fan of a winning football team and coach, or whether it be a family and father, no one wants to let go of that which they have looked up to, aspired towards, cheered on and been part of.   

    By looking at the abused child, you will see that your hero is a monster.

    It isn't the pain of the child, it IS the pain of the dream dying.

    Lynn asked on facebook, "Why is it so painful to support the abused children? Why, why, why (not expecting an answer). The topic of child sex abuse is so uncomfortable yet the victims live their entire lives in a world of hurt."

    It isn't the child's pain we fear, but our own pain as our family dies, our team isn't as grand as we thought, or that the icon coach is just a normal man, who didn't want to turn in a friend, or who didn't want the public to know that it is as vulnerable to abuse as any other organization.

    We fear our own losses so much that we will hold on to a false dream rather than feel it actually die.

    In walkng face first into my greatest fear, I was able to then see the abused child.  It seems we all have a choice in either holding up a dream or letting it die to save a child.

    What very few can do is let go of their own lives in order to save a life of a child, to spare them the shame, guilt and blame of 'wrecking' the dream.

    What hurt me the most, wasn't the rape of my father, nor even the image of him changing from dad to monster, but what hurt even more was being blamed for killing the family.  

    I wasn't rioting for his reputation…so it was seen as I was out to tear our family apart, when in fact all I was doing was standing by the abused children…the long list of girls who suffered under his hands.

    I wasn't able to stand in a picket line supporting those who knew and said nothing, and I was seen as a traitor to our 'family'.  

    It wasn't my pain that they couldn't bear feeling, but they didn't want to feel the pain of losing a family.

    We wonder why more folks are not lining up to give up the details of their abuse, it is to give evidence and facts that will tear apart their dream of family…

    It isn't that we don't support abuse, we don't want to support the tearing apart families, religions and organizations. But if abuse is within, your organization is decaying from the inside out, and eventually, there will be no good there to hold it up.

    Penn State has shown us it isn't the abuse that we can't bear to see, but the shattering dream.