I M Perfect lady

Tag: value

  • Reconnected with my Soul.

    I wondered about knowing your own self worth…is it possible to be full of great wisdom, love, compassion, caring, etc and not know it?  Can a person really not see themselves and their gifts?  Where does self worth come from and how is it so easily overlooked?

    What is self worth?  Is it to see your self with your own eyes and can you do this objectively, or is there a flimy residue of past neglect covering you up?

    I have read that children see themselves through their parent's eyes….(in Alice Miller's books). That how our mother's look at us, is how we learn to see ourselves.

    Is that true?

    But, I also have witnessed people who were abused, and how they see themselves as only valuable when they are 'in use' by others. That they themselves have very little use for themselves in their own life. Their value lies strictly in how much other people need them.

    So, if you come from a very self absorbed mother who didn't see you, you will not see your self either.  And, if your father abused you, HE seen you as his desire…not yours.

    I just wonder when or how we get to our own view of self?

    What has to happen before we can see our own self worth?

    I guess for me, it was when I could clearly see I wasn't seen.

    I felt completely worthless in their eyes.

    I was reduced to nothing.

    I then had to re-build myself.

    My sense of self worth was an inside job and often times I was rediculed by others, and hollered at for choices I made while creating a self that was worth something.

    Even today, this self I now have, isn't always accepted or appreciated or even liked, by others, let alone understood, but inside, the way I see me…I like me.  I love my strength and convictions, my knowings and my feelings.  I am a peace with who I am.  I feel worthy, being me.

    My old view was with my mother's eyes and my worth, was how I was used…and I discovered I was solely used by her to keep her story going, to keep her 'family' together, to keep abuse far and wide from our lives, while abuse worked behind the scenes stealing the worth of each and every child.

    My mother had wrote about me, "Picking up the stragglers" in our family….like my task was to make things 'right' after the damage was done, to fix things, to make them okay again.  And, if I failed, I wasn't giving enough, trying hard enough, doing enough.

    I recall one night laying in my bed and feeling the enormity of their (my parent's) damage, how it not only affect our lives, but our childrens lives.  How it was so far beyond my reach of fixing…sobbing, shaking to the point of losing it, I let it all go.

    Let go of my responsibility for fixing the mess I did not create.

    I disappeared…for I was shown how helpless I really was…without a use. 

    Not only was I abused, but I wasn't going to be able to fix anyone…

    Abuse's insidious energy had completely overwhelmed our family….leaving behind worthless feelings, rising against guilt and shame.  And yet, they (siblings) rallied on, working to make their family right by not seeing yet again…or seeing it through my mother's eyes.

    The cycle completes itself.  Children who are not seen, will not see their children.

    Children who are not seen have no value…unless they are fixing their parents lives.

    This spinning hurricane of worthlessness not stopping…just seemingly to gain more energy as they worked to keep our family 'right'.

    While they were busy shoring up my father's/mother's life, they neglected to see, yet again, their own.

    Their sense of self worth is extracted by what they do for others…never minding at what cost to themselves.

    My journey could be classified with this quote,  "The path into light seems dark, the path forward seems indirect, the direct path seems long…the greatest love seems indifferent, the greatest wisdom seems childish."

    Is the journey recovering your own self worth?

    Who is responsible for it?

    Where will you find it?

    How will you know it?

    When I seen my worth in my mother's eyes, I knew how empty I was…I had done very little for me.

    I have spent the last 8 years filling up my self.


    IMG_9450

    For, if your only value is outside of yourself, you can only see you in their eyes.  It will be impossible to see your self, for you eyes are always turned outward to find your worth.

    My own eyes could not see me.  I only judged me by how others reacted or needed me.  They owned me and gave me value.

    And, coming from dysfunction or abuse or co-dependent living, you will have to disappoint and become value less in their eyes in order to regain your worth.

    "If I gained the world…but, lost the Savior…" comes to mind.  I reconnected with my Soul.



  • 100 Proof.

    When I hear people so vehemently defending their religion, it almost seems like they are taking it personally, perhaps too personal, like there isn’t a self left standing, that the self and the religion are one.

     

    In my experience within the FALC, that the stamp of the church infected each one of my roles.

     

    In fact as a child, you were first taught what a sin was.  That you could or could not do this, not by what was kind or good for humanity, but rather what is good for being a First Apostolic. 

     

    So, instilled within us was the foundation of the FALC, before we even knew who we were, we identified ourselves as First Apostolic, and it ruled our lives from the time we were very little.

     

    Not only that, but the adults in our lives, the ones we depended upon for food and shelter, also lived by this formation. The FALC controlled them, not reasonable thought or what was good for their own family, but what was seen as good within the church.

     

    If you look at how we were indoctrinated from the time we were just babies, it is easy to see how any comment that is shining a light or seemingly smearing the church, it is actually feeling personal, for there is very little about the self that isn’t created by the FALC.

     

    And while deeply invested and entwined within the confines of the religion, there is very little self exposed, so any comment will feel like a direct hit.

     

    Otherwise, if this weren’t so, the reactions would not be so rabid…there could be two people having a discussion.

     

    Yet as far as my experience goes, having a dialogue with someone who is 100 proof of religion or abuse, all you talk to is the religion or the abuse.

     

    You can’t get to the individual or self, for each role and thing they do is seen first through the lens of abuse or religion.

     

    There is no separation…or awareness, it is one solid piece and no matter what words you use or what tone of voice or what research you have found, what the truth literally is, IF it something being said about the 100% make up of who they are, they will react and not respond.

     

    Their reactions will be from fear and understandably so.

     

    I have very little recollection of my years in the FALC, for I was missing.  There was no self there.  I moved through life following the group more or less or feeling shame and guilt if I didn’t.

     

    Mostly I would say shame and guilt for not being a good member.

     

    I didn’t marry within the religion, and I feel that was the first weakening of the hold the religion had on me.  And they do preach that the devil is out there waiting to pull you out.  And it does, but I don’t see it as a devil.

     

    I seen myself from the view of the church or the view of how my family saw me…or the view of how my husband saw me, or the view of how my friends saw me. But never a view of how I saw my self.

     

    If you took all the views away…or without them giving me value, I disappeared.

     

    And in fact, when my family’s abuse came into view, I lost a huge part of my self, for I lived for them.  Then when I discovered that the church knew of my abusive father and that he was blessed repeatedly, even for the latest little girl BY her father, I lost another huge chunk of who I was.

     

    In a few short days, I stood alone.

     

    It was then that I knew I had no me.

    All I had was a person who had been built up by what was needed by the religion and family too. But I had built very little of me and I was 46 years old.

     

    Oh, I suppose I had 25% me.  My art…well maybe not that high, I guess it was more like 5%. 

     

    That 5% was pure me.  And it was from that small beginning I began adding more and more of me into me…and each time I discover another vein of religious or abusive beliefs or thoughts…I know it is another percentage of me coming forth to be brought upright.

     

    So, as I read the comments of those who feel so viscerally attacked, I understand.  For there is very little of you that isn’t made up of FALC ingredients, you may be 100 proof.   

  • In My Mother’s Eyes

    Being in this moment of time and healing my childhood wounds requires me to make changes now what I was incapable of doing back then.

    It is like living in two places at once, or being a grown woman and a little girl at the same time, my past is brought to the present to be healed or the presence goes back to the past to feel, heal and deal.

    What I failed to understand about the term, “healing your childhood wounds”, was that you literally are bringing forward the stuck emotions.

    Meaning you are made to revisit emotions that are stuck on, or places you are stuck and not free.

    Where you carry fear that is unreasonable as a mature woman.

    It is incredible to be a big lady in her own home, feeling feelings of being a ‘bad’ little girl, disappointing or displeasing, hurting her mother.

    How I don’t have this right. This option is not available.

    How the fear of her reaction seems to overshadow my independence and freedom.

    Yet, if I capitulated to the fears, I get stuck in the place emotionally being afraid of my mother’s reaction.

    It is her reaction that I fear.

    This is a very strong iron clad idea that I am not to upset my mother’s world, but what I also didn’t want to see is her reaction.

    It is twofold.

    That there is an unspoken rule, “thou shall not displease thy mother, for there will be a consequence IF you do.”

    It is perhaps the consequence… of what will happen or what do I not want to know?

    There seems to be more than just fear of her reacting badly, but rather seeing what’s beneath.

    In a dysfunctional home, I bet we know that the depth of love for us is very shallow, that we can’t push them very far and we will fall off the ledge of love.

    For in a dysfunctional home, the love of child seems to be last, the very last, in the furthest reaches, out beyond selfish needs, addictions and desires, and what we don’t want to know for sure is that this is true.

    That it is true we are barely seen.

    That we come behind a long list of things that matter more, that even with all the physical evidence to the contrary, we just don’t want to know, our well being comes second, third, or tenth on the list.

    Speaking up, making my wishes known, is to go against our usual dance.

    I am putting down my co-dependent wand.

    My greatest fear is that when I stand and offer to her that my well-being come before hers, that I will be seen as useless to her.

    That my value drops to zero.

    In My Mother’s eyes.

  • What you do in time.

    “Time is the most indefinable yet paradoxical of things; the past is gone, the future is not come, and the present becomes the past even while we attempt to define it, and, like the flash of lightning, at once exists and expires.”   

        ~Charles Caleb Colton

     

     

    My brother wrote about time, its fleeting quality and the fact that the mind gets caught up in it or rather the mind and time go hand and hand.

     

    What is time?  Can you see it and does your body know what time it is on the clock, or does your body simply feel its way through the day?

     

    We are taught to eat by the hour hands on a clock and go to sleep by time, and not body’s physical feelings.  We expect certain things from children in time with little allowance for individual growth.

     

    Time seems to take priority over individual self.

     

    Time slips away we say or is life slipping away?  Is it that we allow our selves to watch time instead of seeing what we are doing?

     

    The more I am aware of what I am doing, how I am spending my time and with whom, the less time seems to matter.

     

    Maybe it isn’t about time at all but instead about being aware of your feelings at all times.

     

    Feeling your feelings in time.

     

    We somehow feel that by spending time, we are sharing ourselves and many times we are just sharing time.

    Doesn’t that remind you of school, taking up space and time?

     

    Life is so much more than taking up space and time in another’s life.

     

    Yet we some how feel it is okay to waste time, but what you are really doing is wasting your life.

     

    Your life has value minute by minute. 

     

    We add its value, with feeling and action; we add the content to time.

     

    You are what you do in time.