I M Perfect lady

Tag: words

  • When She Writes It.

    I am at work, with a racking cough, aching bones and going through piles of mail, and come across my name and my mother's handwriting.  

    I put it in my slot. 

    What now, I wonder, what now…?  The added weight of the letter works on me as I continue to toss the mail.

    As I am bundling the mail to take on the route, I put mine in my purse, in case I decide I need to know what she has to say somewhere along my route.  I don't.  I feel the weight without even reading the words.

    I listen to a novel, moving along box to box, road to road, package to package….time passes, and she comes and goes along the route and I don't read it until I turn on my road.

    These words are spread out on stationary sheet, blue snowflakes around the border…plain white middle.

    Birthday/Christmas 2011

    Dearest Beth,

    You have been a great help and joy for many years.  You are my daughter and I have always loved you from Day 1.

    May God bless us all and give peace in 2012.

    A Mother's Love,

    Always and Forever,

    Mom

    I wonder what she is trying to accomplish by this letter.  What prompts her to send out these words?

    Stating a mother's love? Trying again to make me believe…

     A mother's love???  A mother who blessed her husband when he raped me.  Really, you loved me since day one.  I would beg to differ.  No matter how many times you write it, it still sounds hollow to me.  I don't feel the love.  Too many little girls lives were changed by how you loved me.

    She says I have been a great help and joy….And I certainly had been to abuse. She mentions nothing about my actions today, the present Beth, just the Beth of old.  She sees only her….refusing to acknowledge my changes, the new me.

    "May God Bless us all and give peace in 2012."  

    What is peace to her?  Would peace return to her life, If I would turn back into being a help and a joy for abuse?  Would peace then return, is that the Blessing she wants from her God?  

    Peace in dysfunction…an oxymoron for sure.

    Taken at a glance and just reading the words, it sounds like a lovely letter from a mother to her daughter; but the background experiences taint the words.

    Even the little girl in me feels the absence of her understanding as to where I am at.  I don't know if she can even fathom my path…our differences are so vast.

    While these notes may be comforting or helpful to her, they are not to me.  They come in blindly seeing only how she feels and what I brought….they fail to see how I felt or what I got back then.

    I asked myself, "what did I get from her…?"

    What is my response to her.  

    As a daughter of hers what can I possibly say?

    "Mommy Dearest…"  

    It seems when the hurt gets toughened up and put aside, she comes back in to peck at the cut.  I told her the kindest thing I have to offer her is silence.  No words.  Nothing.  Empty of retorts.

    As soon as I ponder what I would respond, it gets my blood pressure pumping.  I feel all the rage and wounds and resentment, hurt and pain.  Not only for me, but so many little girls, I get swallowed in the dark…I have no kind words to send back to her.

    I stop mentally writing a response…

    I just want her to remain silent.  To let it be.  To stop writing how much she loves me and how she will be my mother forever and always.

    Don't I know it.  Haven't I felt her brand of Love?  Was I not given another dose even today?  How can a mother who allowed such atrocities go on, write this letter to a Me?

    All she sees is how she loved me, not HOW she loved me.

    She misses all the places she wasn't aware…and I was abused.

    She misses all the things she overlooked that caused me pain.

    She misses all the mothering things she failed to accomplish when abuse walked through her door into her life, into her marriage and into her daughter.  She misses that.

    She only wants to see the joy and help.  She doesn't want to see the gaping wound of dysfunction.

    The wound that steered my life into flowing backwards and crooked.

    Seeing my Helping her and Joy for many years IS NOT what I need her to see. She doesn't need to see me that way.

    She needs to see me, a little child being hurt by her father. She needs to see that and then write letter about how she loved me so.

    Without mentioning my pain, her love stays golden.

    And without mentioning my pain… I would dissolve back into a land of dysfunction again.

    She keeps sending me letters expounding on her love…when a letter explaining how she couldn't have loved me would be more true to the nature of my experience.

    I don't want a love letter… I want a letter telling me how she abused me.  Isn't that odd.  We don't want our abusive parents to tell us how much they loved us for we carry scars of abuse…we want them to acknowledge what they did to us was not love.

    I could puke on the words of love she writes.

    Trying to give me her love…in words, when she failed in deeds.

    Once again, she didn't write the letter that will break my silence…

    She continues to hide behind a loving mother…when reality has shown me the opposite.  

     It is good for me to know what letter I am waiting for.  I always felt no need to respond, and now I know what words I am seeking…my truth, I will recognize it when she writes it.

     ‎"Truth can be Unrecognized, but it can't be changed." 

    David Hawkins  

     

     

  • 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.

     

  • Impeccable Word

    Not grasping what is meant by the term Truth, is the key to all of life.

    What does it mean if you can't grasp or know truth?  How are you taught this or perhaps not taught this?  Is there a class where you can understand the terminology of truth?

    There seems to be a fluidity with words when there is no body of truth behind them…words are meaningless unless you attach Truth Feelings.

    The only power words have are the truth feelings that ride along with them, if there is no power of truth, then they just are letters arranged and sounds being spoken.

    What I am not certain of is how you teach truth feelings…and how to utter them instead of words with the opposite feeling attached.

    Or, perhaps this is just the wiring defect with those of us who have been abused, where we are not able to speak what we feel or feel what is the truth.

    A Lie Detector doesn't detect wrong words, but actually how we are feeling when we utter the words…it is monitoring the body.  So what the lie detector really detects are feelings that don't match the sentence being spoken.

    Somehow when we are abused, we have to begin Pretending how we feel, instead of how we actually feel.  This could be due to threats of violence or shame in speaking out, we hide the FEELINGS of abuse.

    I believe we learn that hiding our TRUE FEELINGS is what is needed in order for many things to continue on as 'normal'….and so we do.

    We now have learned to say things we don't mean or feel….we have separated our body of feelings from the words we speak.

    So then our words do not have the support of our true feelings.

    "Being Impeccable with your Words" as Don Miguel Ruiz says, means that our words match what we feel.  I had to look up the word Impeccable….

     "In accordance with the highest standards of propriety; faultless."

    This may be the greatest tragedy of abuse, where we learn to separate what we feel and what we say…we lose our grasp on expressing our feelings truthfully and hold on to the illusion of what is not.

    Our power isn't lost in the act of abuse, our power is lost when we can't speak of how it made us feel…When we can't be truthful with our feelings after, when we have to go back and now pretend nothing happened or to make nice.

    The disconnection between what we feel and what we say is when we start abusing ourselves…

    We disregard how we feel in order to keep the relationship, the family, the 'love' of thy father and thy mother, we fail to grasp and hang on to our feelings of what is true for us…and instead make sure they get what they want and what feels good for them.

    The dance of the offender/victim fails to operate when the victim finally stands up and demands that their feelings be considered.

    While many want to put full blame on the Offenders, there is a second party involved who agrees with this dance, and the game ends when the victim decides that she/he is allowed to bring forth her true feelings.

    While many think this is a battle of words or powerful actions, it is actually a game of whose feelings will be honored…whose feelings are of greater value?

    What I have come to know, is that abusive parents, believe that their feelings matter more, have a higher slot on the scale of life, and that their children must submit and acquiesce their feelings. 

    It is the acquiescing of their truth and feelings…Accept something reluctantly but without protest…that makes them the perfect victim.

    And in doing so, learn to live without grasping the meaning of truthfulness…for to be truthful is to be without a family.

    They willingly give up their truth feelings to save a family…yet all they are really doing is allowing the Offender to go on.

    If only, all my 46 years of living without adhering to my feelings bought to bear a loving father and a supportive mother, then it wouldn't have been all for naught, but it was.

    No matter how much I suppressed my feelings, it didn't magically create them differently.  All that happened is that I suppressed what I felt. That is all.

    Even when I unleashed all that I felt, nothing really changed.  They didn't suddenly SEE what they had done and then changed.  Nope, all that happened is I began to walk impecably with how I felt.

    I no longer suppressed and hid what I felt.

    I took grasp once again of my feelings and held on…for it was clear to me, I was holding on to truth…

    Suppressing the truth doesn't change anything, it only prolongs the inevitable.  I had to look up SUPPRESSING…

    To Prevent the Development, action or expression of a feeling, impulse, idea…restrain.

    So, instead of holding firmly on to family, We are holding back the feelings of fear, loss, betrayal, hurt, sorrow…

    We don't want to feel those feelings attached to our parents.

    And in not owning or being truthful with the negative feelings, we betray all our feelings…we loose our impeccable word.

     

     

     


  • Perfect for Me.

    A thought came to mind yesterday as I wondered about the withholding of truths, that perhaps it is the desire to be perfect that stops us.
    We don't want to say things that are upsetting or we don't want to not go along to cause waves so we refrain from our truths to look better, seem more perfect, nicer even.
    Yet in this 'nicer more perfect' mode, we are not feeling that inside.
    Inside the storms rage, the contradictions swell, and it seems like we are split in two…having to wear 'nice' while feelings and emotions as well as knowledge seem to overwhelm the inside.
    Just like pretending you don't have raging reaction to a bad food, where your stomach is turning, sharp pains, nausea, etc…and you continue to have a calm pleasant face.
    Being truthful is to vomit up all what we hold inside, getting rid of the turmoil that is infesting our insides.  And we want to do this in  pleasant non-hurtful manner, or without causing grief…which is impossible.
    The reasons and sources of our angst usually aren't  wonderful experiences, but rather trauma.  Speaking up about trauma will not sound or feel like chatting about the purchase of a new car.  It will hold pieces and shards of pain, hurt, betrayal, fear, anxiety, shock and horror.  It will reduce you to a shaking quacking hurt soul, and you have to explain how you feel.
    We unveil our wounded soul. 
    The same one we had to cover up in order to survive, we now take the chance  of dying in order to speak of it.
    And there is a dying of sorts.  The death of the survival person, the one who lived pretending the abuse didn't happen.  This survival person is who people liked, who got along, who was 'nicer' and 'kinder'….and we are afraid that the truthful person will be annihilated.
    In my case it happened.  My survival self (the pretending trauma didn't live in my body) was accepted and my truthful self rejected.
    Being rejected for being my truthful self felt like being abused a second time around, but this time aware and fully present…And this time, I didn't have the the body's natural survival mode of "Disassociation"….I wanted to feel this, to accept this, to acknowledge this, to honor this IN order to now live in reality.
    I wasn't willing to revert back to my childhood ways of living a life inside that was totally different from my presentation to the world.  
    This time, what I feel inside matches the features on my face or my actions and often times, non-actions.
    I no longer care if I am perfect for you, I am always perfect for me.
    " The First Casualty of Dysfunction is truth" Carl Huhta

  • Life with no words?

    I listened to Deepak Chopra talk to John Francis who wrote a book called “The Ragged Edge of Silence”. He didn’t speak for 17 years. Yes, 17 years, but he did journal and he also gave up riding in gas vehicles. But what he said about silence is that when you are silent it is impossible to lie or argue.

    Isn’t that interesting?

    He also said that once he stopped talking he felt his authentic self arise and his ‘social’ self disappear.

    Imagine your day or week minus all the chatter?

    How much of your self is only known through what you say and not what you do, how you act or where you go.

    Would you be afraid to live in silence?

    I wondered if he talked to himself at all?

    Perhaps I will have to read this book and see what other insights come when you are silent with all people.

    And you know, I wonder how many people would be comfortable with you being silent, for many are uncomfortable in silences, awkward pauses would be frequent!

    It is interesting to know how you use language is it to share your insights, to reprimand, to command, to demand, to cheer, to delight, to ignite…imagine a life with no words?

  • Surprises Me!

    “What is so interesting is that your quilt Lady has no body and your blog is all about the body…” is an insight a woman shared with me about my Art. “I don’t think you even see what you do…”

    I was so shocked and surprised at the way this woman was able to see and understand so clearly my Lady…and I was shocked she put the two together and seen the opposite.

    My lady quilts are all about feelings but there isn’t a body or even a face to be seen on the quilts. In fact it is a challenge to create them minus actually having a body, you make the clothes move like a ghost is wearing them.

    And the blog is totally different; it is all about the body, the mind and the soul…all things missing in the quilts.

    On my way home, I was thinking about the Lady not having a body and it struck me deep within, it is how I lived for so long, just clothes. That within me lay a ghost of me, but not one that was able to express herself.

    How curious or not, that my Ladies still have no body…yet are filled with expression or feelings…free enthusiasm a woman owning her life.

    I love that my blog is the missing body from the quilts and that each stand strong alone, but become greater together, like the blog is the background story or the Lady the pictures in a book.

    How interesting to be the author and the artist and learn about your work from another.

    I love that my work surprises me!

    Smug mug pics 2522

    I can see how this quilt is the emerging awareness!

  • Will not change the Art.

    Surely nothing has to listen to so many stupid remarks as a painting in a museum. ~Edmond & Jules de Goncourt

    How interesting to look at Art museums from the point of view of the works of Art and how it is to stand around listening to various remarks…

    Immediately I felt that we are all moving works of Art and the planet is the museum, and we all have our own commentary and perceptions of each other’s Art.

    How interesting that the Art can be defined by the viewer and how it changes as new viewers arrive.

    I also believe that we change as quickly each time we bump into new people and a new perspective.

    I love that I now have this metaphor and I will see myself as a work of Art moving around the planet. But what I love even more is the understanding of how different we see Art and what some find brilliantly incredible, others will pass right by.

    How cool that Art changes by the viewer… yet not at all.

    The Art stands unchanged yet changed depending upon the perception.

    I love that I am like Art, that some will understand and appreciate my contrasts and design, while others will make a cursory glance and walk on by.

    But what I love the most, my integrity lies within and remains unchanged by those who view me.

    Remarks, even stupid ones will not change the Art.

    (Is Art imitating life or life imitating Art?)

    IMG_5722

  • An Artist with words.

    I have been going to writing classes, listening as Authors speak of their writing techniques and style, it seems they all know what their pattern is called and how it works, and I have yet to hear one who writes like me.

    My words come barreling out, pushing and shoving each other; they are not at all concerned about style and land on the page happy to be free from my tangled mine.

    They are driven by confusion and fear mostly, and feel much better on a clear white paper, all sorted out and explained.

    My writing starts usually with a thread or a nagging and often times a sinking feeling, and it matters not to me or the words how they look after we are done explaining.

    They are all bunched up in my head, running over each other, truths buried beneath the piles of fearful thoughts, overrun with uprooted beliefs and all are wanting the space to sort themselves out.

    A place where they can line up and be seen and felt, acknowledged and labeled correctly, room for separating truth from fiction.

    They are in a hurry and are reckless, heedless to watching where they land and how. Haphazardly flopped they care less about how they look as long as they are felt properly.

    As a writer I have failed in the eyes of the writing teachers, for I have not followed any proven path, but set out on my own and let my words land as they may, letting them be the creators not I.

    It truly puzzles me how they can know ahead what the words are going to need, how they can have in mind the structure that they will use to express themselves, like map writing, they seem to know where the words are going.

    My words are like vagabonds wandering around or riots of revolting feelings; it would be nearly impossible to know ahead of time where they are going, let alone draw a map ahead of time.

    Perhaps my words and self-expression have been tied up in the dark for too long; guarded, restrained and held in strict beliefs and ideas, that we are not willing to succumb to lying down nicely, instead we run wild in expressive freedom.

    Maybe I am not a writer at all, but an artist with words.

  • Hide what isn’t there.

    “Speech as opposed to telepathy used by the animals…and the silence of muktas arose due to a need to be untruthful, and have a deeper involvement in material.” Tony O’Clery

    Speech arose due to the need to be untruthful is what I get from this quote, that we use language to deflect the true meaning of our actions or to excuse behavior.

    Immediately I thought of dogs and how we learn who they are by how they behave. A friendly dog acts friendly and an unfriendly dog acts unfriendly.

    What we miss is the excuse or reason an unfriendly dog is unfriendly, we take it as it is for they don’t have the luxury of words to sway us to believe otherwise.

    And we don’t have unfriendly dogs trying to be friendly, by speaking nicely over feelings of unfriendliness.

    Dr. Maya Angelou quote, “People show you who they are, Believe them.”

    Yet time and time again, we will take the words above the action.

    “I love you” will override the abusive action.

    “I am sorry or please forgive me,” is a way to deflect away from the behavior.

    What if we all stood with how we acted each time?

    What if we address immediately the action?

    What if words were used to just speak of actions?

    How often are your words used to get the other person to not believe your actions?

    Owning our actions seems like a really simple thing, but often times our actions alone are untruthful, we go places we don’t want to go, we do things we don’t feel right doing, we go along to get along.

    We get lost to what our own standards are for we get used to doing things for peace and to not be a stick in the mud, to be seen as okay, or a million other reasons.

    Due to this speech thing, we can tell ourselves we are doing something for a good reason, even when the behavior is bad for us and for others, we will find an ulterior motive that makes it okay.

    It is like the Picketers at funerals of soldiers, they feel that their message overrides all events taking place.

    What they fail to see is that their behavior is actually screaming above the signs, their true nature is showing, their hatred and fear arises long before a sign of love.

    They say they are warning us of God’s wrath, what they are displaying is their own wrath.

    The visual of picketers is what I often times feel of people who tell you one thing but do another. That we are supposed to keep our eyes focused on the sign and not see where they are walking and over who they tromp, just focus on the words, like a mad hypnotist of lies they bend us to believe opposite of what is truly going on.

    If you look at the world through the eyes of babies or animals, you would see things differently.

    “Out of the mouths of babes” comes truth, for they have not learned the power of words to hide what isn’t there.

  • Let me be Free!

    While many may not feel or experiences brushes from souls passed, I feel the presence of my father’s sister, the one who taught me how to quilt, who set me on a path of playing with fabric that suited my nature.

    She didn’t bend me to do what she felt, but listened and offered to me a pattern that fit my free spirit, one that gave me my first drink of what it feels like to be the architect, the designer and the builder, she opened the door for me to play.

    She herself would do intricate, tiny little pieces that had to match perfectly, her work was detailed and painstakingly put together, I was her complete opposite, yet we matched in doing what we loved to do.

    Her past relationships with men were ones that left her hurting and it seemed she found solace in Art.

    My youngest daughter, out of the blue, says she wants to do a quilt, and it is the same quilt my Aunt had offered to me as a good first quilt.

    Unbeknownst to my daughter, I feel she is being spoken to by her great aunt, for she knows the feelings my daughter is going through and is heading her in a direction where she can find herself, Art.

    During my darkest spots on my journey, I clung to the moments when I had the energy to be lost in fabric, design and colors, and in those moments, I could feel my Aunt speak to me, telling me words of wisdom, that applied to working on a new technique in quilting or walking a new walk in life.

    I was given my Aunt’s sewing machine after she died, and I believe her spirit lingers nearby and encourages me to stretch and reach and be beyond where she was able to be.

    Her influence in my quilting, especially when I had just begun was key to me continuing forward, her undying faith that I could do anything is with me still.

    I felt that I wasn’t alone anymore in teaching my daughter, that I would have leagues of woman who have gone before lending their wisdom and voices with mine.

    My aunt loved my daughter, her spirit, her disposition, her spunk, her flair for being herself, and I know that if it is possible to help her now, she will.

    Today is a full circle moment, where I can be the teacher as I take my daughter to choose the fabric of her first quilt, it is my greatest hope that I can instill in her the love of quilting that my Aunt gave to me, or the art of creating.

    And all she did was open the door and let me be free!