Tag: voiceless

• In Control Within the Flow

  Today's reading, March 21,in the Book of Awakening, by Mark Nepo "To Harbor and Release"  I love this one.

  "Often the pain of resisting makes us rust like iron, and in order to re-enter the flow of life, we need to be scraped back to our original surface.  Our feelings, if not released, bread the heart with their grit. Like windows filmed by weather, we wait on loving hands to be rubbed clear.  It is inevitable.  Experience covers us over, and the expressive journey lets us come clean to the table of light. Again."

  "All things in existence participate in this involuntary cycle.  For human beings, the process of living stains us repeatedly with the grit of being here, with heartache and disappointment and the pointedness of being human, which can sicken us if harbored or make us whole if released.  Again and again, we, more than any other life form, have this majestic and burdensome power to harbor or release the impact of our experience."

  "Humbly, we are asked to keep the flow real between what is taken in and what is let out.  We have only to breathe to remember our place as a living inlet.  Experience in, feelings out.  Surprise and challenge in, heartache and joy out.  In a constant tide, life rushes in, and in constant release, we must let it all run back off.  For this is how the earth was made magnificent by the sea and how mankind is carved upright, again and again, by the ocean of spirit that sets us free."  Mark Nepo

  What we have to remember, what we take in, we have to let out.  I love, "Experience in, Feelings out."  This one sentence alone says so much.

  I believe that children who were abused in childhood, learn to experience and not to let the feelings out. We instead try and hold our feelings inside and do so til we explode in various ways.

  Rarely are children allowed to express their feelings after being sexually abused or physically abused.  We experience and then we have no outlet.

  This alone has created an unnatural way of being human. To take in things in silence our of fear of reprisals, is living half way.  This is how the rust builds upon us. And in my experience, only by expressing what has gone unexpressed, do we clear away the layers of film upon us.

  The natural process of Experience in, Feelings out, is disrupted in abuse and this alone is the cause of so much disease and violence…we are out of control, out of order, not able to work correctly.

  The term harboring resentment came to mind.  I didn't know that when we don't express our feelings (release them) we are harboring.  

  I had truckloads of expressions to release, and in the beginning they flowed like a rushing river, tumbling over each other, with volumes raised, they tore out of me…held back so long their force near violent in the outward flow.

  While it had to be shocking and out of character for others to witness this of me, it felt extremely healing to say what I had failed to say…for years.

  I wasn't the most prolific or articulate or kind as the words came rushing out, but I was scraping off the rust of old feelings I hadn't felt.  Some were not so pleasant or kind themselves…and all had to be felt in order to be released.

  Now, it is my intention to not let layers of unexpressed or unfelt emotions pile up upon myself, for it feels heavy and a burden to carry…so whatever I experience, I let my feelings out…I don't like holding on to feelings.  

  Harboring your feelings seems safer when you have been abused…we learn to keep them in order to get along and for sheer survival for some.  

  Abuse teaches us to live only taking in…never in a healthy release.

  I am still learning how to release.  Sometimes it still comes out very fearful or childlike in expression, but to me…it isn't about the delivery, but rather that they get out.  Maybe over time, with enough space and healing, I will be able to release them with a graceful kind and compassionate delivery…and not the hurried careless abandon that often rushes out.

  I will find my natural releasing stance…that isn't totally harboring or rushing abandon…but rather a fearless authenticity, beautiful yet powerful, in control within the flow. 

   

   

   

   

   

  March 21, 2012

  abuse, awakening, book, child, feelings, Mark, Nepo, of, releasing, voiceless

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• Parents Call Family.

  I came across this paragraph in "Codependent No More" by Melody Beatte. 

  "Codependents are indirect. We don't say what mean, we don't mean what we say.  We don't do this on purpose. We do it because we've learned to communicate this way. At some point, either in our childhood or adult family, we learned it was wrong to talk about problems, express feelings, and express opinions. We've learned it was wrong to directly state what we want and need. It was certainly wrong to say no, and stand for ourselves. An alcoholic (abusive) parent or spouse will be glad to teach these rules; we have been too willing to learn and accept them." MB

  Communicating poorly was taught to us.

  To NOT communicate how we felt was demanded of us, expected of us.  This was dictated by the abusive parent who needed us to not mention how their behavior felt to us.  Or god forbid, speak of it to another person, share our experience, express our feelings… and communicate about abuse.  

  Even the spouse of the abuser will follow the rules.  They too will not talk about the 'problems' and the child then has no adult to which he/she can communicate directly.  

  Direct communication becomes extinct.

  If you communicate directly to these such folks, (abusers and their partners) you will be snuffed out, silenced, tossed to the curb, annihilated from their lives.  They will easily get rid of you so as not to hear a direct communication about a 'problem'.

  Their problem, their abusive behavior, their cover up, their lack of paying attention, their lack of doing nothing, their lacks in allowing abuse to continue on.  They certainly don't want to hear about it OR how it has affected the lives of so many and how it is now trickling down into the next generation. 

  Abuse has its own island, and while we were born upon that island, we can't tell anyone what happened there, how we lived, who was there and what happened…it is like we fell from the sky, but not raised in abuse. 

  Yet we spent the first 18 years of our lives there…and it is as if 'nothing' happened.  As if our early years are meaningless.  Our parents don't want to know that they indeed left a permanent scar

  Our battle scars are wounds that go unhealed, for the very thing we need to heal is forbidden.  We are not allowed treatment.

  Imagine, one parent wounds you and the other refuses to treat you…a child is left on the island unable to communicate, or it will be tossed out to sea, the sea of estrangement.

  And guess what, it matters not how many years pass on, whether you are now married with children, IF you ever dare speak of your life on the Island of Abuse, you will be banished…

  Many feel it is better to live among those on the Island and speak indirectly and without meaning, than to speak their truth and fall into the sea.

  Those are our two damn choices. 

  Pick one.

  The sea of estrangement brought me back to me.

  I still see the Island and hear about the Islanders, their parties and their lives…and in the early days of swimming alone, I longed to go back, but each and every time I considered it, I knew that I would have to leave the new me behind.

  The rules on the Island forbade the use of direct communication or expression of ones feelings or to discuss problems.  If I were to go back, I go back as a voiceless, choiceless, indirect and meaning not what I say girl.  I can't.

  Once you get used to swimming in the sea of freedom and truth, it is impossible to be happy on the Island of Abuse.  

  Which I know is why many parents are scared spit-less for their children to speak up and be direct, for it means they are heading to the open sea…and when they get a taste of being free, they will never return to the dark Island of Abuse. 

  One that the parents call family.

  

  December 18, 2011

  abuse, beatte, choice, codependent, communication, direct, express, freedom, melody, more, no, to, voiceless

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