I M Perfect lady

Tag: wounded

  • Covering Up my Truth.

    I listened to Jane Fonda speaking about her life, and I wasn't able to write it down word for word, but what she had to say struck me.

    How our survival self stands in the way of us growing up and becoming whole.

    I know this is true.  

    She said, "I stepped out of myself to live next door to me, in a shell of perfection."

    This shell is pretending to not be hurt and abused, but to be 'okay' and 'normal'. We have to act like this, in order to maintain the family's image and good front.  It soon becomes who we are, it grows thicker and thicker, the longer we live this way.

    She also said that the tool we use to survive, becomes the tool that is the obstacle for becoming whole.

    I see it as the shell has to be taken down in order to get back to your own self, and this shell is the facade we lived as to be normal and okay.  Removing this wall brings us to our truth.

    Our truth is scary on many levels.  For one it is not accepted by our parents and others who want to remain in their shells.  And it was terrifying knowing that I lived as a shell, but not me. That my truth wasn't who I had lived as.

    I knew my shell much better than I knew who I was and my history.  As a shell I constructed things to look better than they appeared. Friendlier, kinder and more loving.  Outside of the shell it was like all my friends became enemies.

    Yet, without ever leaving the shell of pretend, I would not have grown up…I would have remained stunted and as immature as a child inside; a wounded child.

    It is funny, in a peculiar way, that we believe we can add things to cover up our abuse, and that we can grow around it.  But, in the end, we end up with a pretty, perfect shell, and a yucky inside.

    Our outer appearance can't change how we feel inside.

    This is the mad dance and marathon…forever adding something on the outside to help boost our self esteem.  I couldn't be good enough, smart enough or cute enough to erase the abuse.

    Once I sat down with my wounded child, I was able to begin growing as me.

    No more shells.  

    No more pretending.  

    Instead I began falling in love with me…broken, abused, but real.  

    I loved my real self and had to say good bye to the shell.  

    The shell that helped me survive my childhood had followed me into adulthood.  

    Jane is right, the shell that kept me surviving my childhood, also kept me from being whole and me.

    So in order to become me, I had to leave my shell behind.

    My shell was the shield that kept my real feelings from showing.

    Kept me from pleasing myself, but always pleased others.

    It shielded me from becoming too emotional and loving, from being open and vulnerable.  My soft spot remained behind this thick wall.

    I remember my husband commenting, in the very early days of my father's exposure, that I was like a scared rabbit.  And I was.  I was walking around fully exposed without my shell.

    God, those early days were brutal.  Living life without a shell had me feeling extremely naked…and bloody.  The image of a wound.

    I was walking around as a wound…without a shell. No longer able to pretend that I wasn't abused.

    Until you can heal the wound you are very sensitive…with your nerves exposed.

    Now, I feel my wound is healed.

    Shell long discarded…and I am growing up. 

    My insides are matching my body.

    I no longer am a grown woman, wearing a shell, to cover up my wounded child.

    I am now grown woman who was wounded as a child…who grew up as I mothered my own wound, by no longer covering up my truth.



  • Listening.

    In the book, "Reconciliation: Healing the Inner Child" by Thich Nhat Hanh, he writes about Listening.

    "When we speak of listening with compassion, we usually think of listening to someone else.  But we must also listen to the wounded child inside of us.  Sometimes the wounded child in us needs all our attention. That little child might emerge from the depths of your consciousness and ask for your attention.  If you are mindful, you will hear his or her voice calling for help.  At that moment, instead of paying attention to whatever is in front of you, go back and tenderly embrace the wounded child.  You can talk directly to the child with the language of love, saying, "In the past, I left you alone.  I went away from you.  Now, I am very sorry.  I am going to embrace you." You can say, "Darling, I am here for you. I know that you suffer so much.  I have been busy.  I have neglected you, and now I have learned a way to come back to you."  If necessary, you have to cry together with that child. Whenever you need to, you can sit and breathe with the child. "Breathing in, I go back to my wounded child; Breathing out, I take good care of my wounded child."

    "You have to talk to your child several times a day.  Only then can healing take place.   Embracing you child tenderly, you reassure him that you will never let him down again or leave him unattended.  The little child has been left alone for so long. That is why you need to begin this practice right away. If you don't do it now, when will you do it?"

    "If you know how to go back to her and listen carefully every day for five or ten minutes, healing will take place.  When you climb a beautiful mountain, invite your child to climbe with you. When you contemplate the sunset, invite her to enjoy it with you.  If you do that for a few weeks or a few months, the wounded child in you will experience healing."

    "With practice, we can see that our wounded child is not only us.  Our wounded child my represent several generations.  Our mother may have suffered throughout her life.  Our father may have suffered.  Perhaps our parents weren't able to look after the wounded child in themselves.  So when you're embracing the wounded child within us, we're embracing all the wounded children of our past generations.  This practice is not a practice for ourselves alone, but for numberless generations of ancestors or descendants."

    "Our ancestors may not have known how to care for their wounded child within, so they transmitted their wounded child to us.  Our practice is to end this cycle.  If we can heal our wounded child, we will not only liberate ourselves, but will also help liberate whoever has hurt or abused us.  The abuser may also have been the victim of abuse. There are people who have practiced with their inner child for a long time who have had a lessening of their suffering and have experienced transformation. Their relationships with family and friends have become much easier."

    "We suffer because we have not been touched by compassion and understanding. If we generate the energy of mindfulness, understanding and compassion for our wounded child, we will suffer less. When we generate mindfulness, compassion and understanding become possible, and we can allow people to love us.  Before, we may have been suspicious of everything and everyone.  Compassion helps us relate to others and restores communication."

    "The people around us, our family and friends, may also have a severely wounded child inside.  If we've managed to help ourselves, we can also help them.  When we've healed ourselves, our relationships with others become much easier.  There's more peace and more love in us."

    "Go back and take care of your self.  Your body needs you, your feelings need you, your perceptions need you.  The wounded child in you needs you.  Your suffering needs you to acknowledge it.  Go home and be there for all these things.  Practice mindful walking and mindful breathing. Do everything in mindfulness so you can really be there, so you can love."  Thich Nhat Hanh 

    I know that we are not truly listening If we only listen to others and neglect hearing what our wounded child needs.  Unhealed wounded children are the source of all the pain on this planet…

    Each of us can end the pain and suffering by learning how to hear what our wounded child needs.

  • Returns to being good.

    What a multifaceted catch 22 it is when society is asking that the children of abuse be the ones to stop it. To be the ones to name their perpetrator, to come out of their cages of captivity and walk freely with courage seems insurmountable.

    What it fails to realize is the condition of the conditioned mind and how it has programmed the child or the adult child to bow down to authority, to keep silent and suffer in silence.

    We have been taught by experiences to go it alone and to keep to ourselves our selves, to not expose or share the feelings part of us, but instead walk around with a veneer finish that covers our truths.

    We have lived mostly as the veneer and have not allowed the real self to peep through and now in order to stop the abuse we have to completely reverse this.

    The veneer has to fade to the back and what comes forth is all we have tried to keep hidden. We have to now present to the world the very thing that terrorized us.

    Imagine? We are the ones who stop the monster, we whose power they took, now have to come forward fearlessly.

    And yet, as odd as this seems, as backwards and as upside down, the very step in sharing your wounds is the very thing you need to begin building your strength and courage, it will help define who you are from the base of truth.

    To speak your truth of who you are and what happened to you, who you fear and why, are truthful utterances of your journey in life, your biography and pathology, what has made you you. You then are able to see and feel that IT isn’t you that is bad, but them. You are not the problem, they are.

    And, by having a veneer, also shows the lack of support and caring you had. It literally shows how untreated you are.

    If, you had to ‘hide’ your abuse, it shows that you lived in an abusive home. For if you lived in a loving caring home, the abuse would have been treated, you would have been lovingly cared for and nurtured and the Bad Man/Woman would have been put away as so not to harm another.

    When the bad man/woman is not put away, we are left to feel bad and actually are told to put away our wounds.

    What an odd show and tell it now requires in order to stop more generations, we have to show who the monster is and then our wounded self returns to being good.

  • Learn to catch it.

    I have missed 12 days in the 32 days that have passed of this 60-Day Yoga Challenge, and I have no desire to try and catch up, but to continue on.

    The days I missed were days when I was too emotionally traumatized to even begin to focus on yoga and my body, what I needed to do was find my balance inside, to seek my peace and find where I stood mentally.

    What these past few weeks have shown me is how far I have come, how close our family is, how when one is suffering it affects us all, and it is at that time it is crucial we all maintain our strength so we can help the wounded.

    I heard a woman speak to Oprah yesterday who wrote the book, “Simple Abundance, Sarah BanBreathnach on you can tell how a woman feels inside by how she feels inside her own home.

    It is interesting to know that how at peace you are in your home, how comfortable and what is allowed in your home all represents your state of self inside.

    It came to me in Yoga today, that my mother didn’t have boundaries and our home didn’t have boundaries, she overlooked or failed to see when bad energies stole in.

    And even when informed of them, she didn’t stand up for integrity of home, for inside of her she lacked her own sense of value.

    Sarah also told Oprah that the greatest wound that women suffer is the lack of self-esteem.

    And this self-esteem seems to be the first tragedy of abuse, that it is stolen in the first act and if you fail to tell, you then commit the next act to yourself.

    You continue to give away your self until there is nothing left to give.

    What I was doing for the past few weeks instead of doing yoga, was to find my way through a sea of abuse, wrestling with my emotional wounded self and the woman I had been, to find a new way of dealing when tragedy strikes.

    To not deal emotionally as a wounded child nor even as cold hearted dictator controlling self, but to reach beyond and find a new way to interact.

    By keeping my view on me, what I can and cannot do, what I can and cannot partake in, and speaking about my feelings and my view of reality, I was able to navigate myself into acting much more reasonable and as an adult.

    I was able to witness myself as a loving adult dealing with abuse, and also as a loving adult dealing with abuse and its affects, seeing how my daughter wasn’t able to stop abusing herself, I stood my ground in not taking responsibility for her actions and handing them back.

    The lessons and gifts I have gotten are so multi-faceted and how my daughter was my greatest teacher.

    She now stands alone and separate a young woman who will now set forth and make choices that will define her life.

    It isn’t the mistakes we make but how we walk from that moment on.

    Each day is a new day to begin making a new choice.

    Choices are the only way the soul grows, is another thing that Sarah said.

    I may have to look up this wise woman and read her words.

    Life isn’t about the big stuff, but in each little choice we make, we are either building up our self or giving it away.

    You know Sarah also stated that the givers have to also receive that if you can’t get something back from those you give to they will eventually drain you.

    So, as we give we have to learn how to receive the same energy back.
    Like a boomerang we have to learn to catch it!

  • Imperfectly Me.

    Yesterday morning, after a sleepless night I wrote the post about unconditional love, about knowing to the depth of my soul, no matter what I will not be the one to abuse my wounded child.

    I let go of all things but unconditional love.

    My husband and I had decided we would get out of the house and go for breakfast to give us a chance to talk privately.

    My husband turns to me when I enter the car and says, “do you have anything left to say to our daughter, is there anymore you have to offer?”

    And I say very weak defeated, no, I have nothing, all my knowing, my wise words and experience, all my efforts and love are not seemingly working, I am at the end of the road, I have nothing.

    He says, “Good. Here is how this is going to go down. What we did to her last night, by pressing her is going to drive her out of our home. I will not do that to her. She is hurt and needs a place to be, where there is no one pressuring her, a place where she feels comfortable…I love my daughter and want her always to feel that she is welcome in our home no matter what.

    I tell him, I agree. I just learned about my unconditional love for her, that I too will not hurt her when she is down.

    The next thing he says is you have to let her go, let her do it her way, let her be EVEN if she decides to move out of our home, let her decide, You have to let her go.

    I tell him he is asking too much.

    In that instant, I feel the little girl in me terrified of letting go, of losing once again.

    I tell him, Honey I know about letting go, about letting them decide, of allowing them to be, I let my family go and none of them came back to me.

    I have lost and I have lost and none of them ever come back, you are asking way too much, and now you are asking me to let go of my little girl to let her go free while she is alone and lost.

    I can’t let her go, for if she doesn’t come back I don’t know what I will do, I can’t let her go, I don’t have a heart big enough to bear this if she doesn’t come back.

    I tell him, “Mr. Big as a House Heart Man, you will have to lead this, you will have to stand in front of me, for me with the “Little as a Rock Broken Heart lady can’t be out front, I am afraid that if this little piece shatters, I will not have anything left, that I will go down and not come back up.”

    Honey I can let her go but your big heart will have to carry me, my heart isn’t big enough to do this alone and I don’t know how.

    In that moment I felt my holding grasp, its final clutch leave, and she was set off alone.

    Peace overcame me in that instant that seemed to settle over the spot that terror lived.

    My husband continues on unaffected by my emotional display. He says, “we can’t tell her what to do, she is a young lady, she is inexperienced, but this is how she will learn, we will offer her a space here to heal, but not tell her what to do.”

    I am in total agreement and following his lead.

    It is the first time in my life I let go of being responsible of taking the lead of getting on the back of the motor bike, of getting out of the wind and flying bugs and debris to snuggle in behind him and let him tell me what it is we need to do.

    What my husband and I then discussed was exactly what he had done for me six years ago when my world crumbled, when I too discovered that the relationships I had were very dysfunctional, when I had lost my way, when I found my self upside down and backwards, when I didn’t have a radar that knew its way, my dear husband opened up his heart wider, opened up our home, and allowed me to enter in.

    Nothing changed inside, it remained a place of normal in an otherwise upside down unnormal world.

    I entered in exactly as I found myself; there were no requirements no rules or regulations that I had to change first to be here.

    He allowed me the space, he demanded nothing, he asked no questions, he made no suggestions, he allowed me, a frightened wounded animal, to come into the warm space of his loving home and curl up an be safe.

    He never, not once asked me to do something I did not want to do, he waited for me to decide I was ready.

    He never not once wanted me to be further healed than I was, he waited for me to share with him.

    He continued to love and hold me like nothing had changed, to him I was the same person but sick or wounded, that was all.

    I told him, ”What you want me to do for our daughter is what you already did for me, I can do this.”

    I get to be him, to walk in his shoes and just allow her to be. I know even more for I have actually walked those steps.

    I felt immediately, that this was the right path for healing for I know that without him, this house, the space and undemanding loved ones, I would not have made it. I can now give to her that.

    I told him, “I can’t imagine what this had to be like for you, with a wounded wife, to be the only one to do this, it had to be very hellish, and how did we make it through that?”

    He isn’t wanting to go back, he wants to be here.

    He tells me, “you are not to say anything negative, in fact you are not allowed to say anything at all, you are to go on creating a loving home, doing what we have always done here and let her just be.”

    I say, “Honey I get it, I get to be a loving mom unconditionally l can do this.”

    I say I will follow your lead, for did the perfect job for me.

    As we sat face to face over breakfast, my body a noodle, empty and drained, feeling like I had just completed a 6 year marathon, I say to him.

    “Honey, what would a perfect mother have done?”

    He says to me, “she would have stopped this morning like you did, she would done exactly everything you did and said, but she would stop now and let her go.”

    I know for some this may not seem like an answer to a trouble wounded child, but it worked for a very mentally twisted up and wounded adult child.

    I sit in awe of what this man has done for me, and what we, him and I can do for our little girl, our almost woman child who has been wounded, we can open our home, our hearts and welcome her in.

    We demand nothing but accept all.
    We say nothing unless asked.

    We work hard to maintain the energy or atmosphere of our home as it always was.

    We keep this the one piece in the world unchanged in her very changed life.

    This home, the people in this home were my saving grace.

    They never treated me like the outside world talked of me, they remained true to me as what we had previous, they did not change.

    They went to work and did what they loved, they did not have a blame or shameful eye directed at me.

    In their eyes I was imperfectly me.

  • My Spirit Experiencing Life Itself!

    Robert Bly also writes, Some old traditions say that no man is adult until he has become opened to the soul and spirit world, and they say that such an opening is done by a wound in the right place, at the right time, in the right company.  A wound allows the spirit or soul to enter.  James Hillman, referring to Hans Castorp in “The Magic Mountain,” and the spot of tuberculosis on Castrop’s lung says, “Through the little hole of his wound, the immense realm of the spirit enters.”

     

    I know this to be true.  It is when you feel so wounded, so forlorn, that you see life from a new angle.

     

    It is was in my darkest moments that I would walk outside, for my grief was more than this house could hold, and I would be overwhelmed by the Spirit of the Universe.

     

    Its immenseness overpowered the weight of the grief.

    In the battle of dark and Light, Light won.

     

    It wasn’t that the grief just magically disappeared, but I had a place to go to feel immense joy, to know my life and its purpose was much larger than I.

     

    It was in the darkest of dark nights, when emotions and feelings overwhelmed me, the feelings of worthlessness, of not mattering, of being so utterly neglected and used, that I found the Spirit in me.

     

    The mightiness of the Spirit and the weight of the wound left me breathless most of the time.  From great heights of joy, love and peace, to the deepness of anxiety and shame/blame and pain, I rode the roller coaster ride of emotions.

     

    To go from unfeeling to feeling so much, it overwhelmed my body, like a tsunami they flowed taking with it all the mind chatter and worry, and all I could do was be with this one moment in time.

     

    Feel this.  Each high wave brought tears either of joy or grief.  Inside of my chest came alive.  I can’t even describe that feeling there. 

     

    It still happens today, a word, a scene in nature, an apple tree bare of all leaves, with just gold apples on display, make me gulp and feel its display, its pureness of being and doing itself.

     

    Reality takes my breath away and feeling feelings and emotions whether they are slight or immense, is my Spirit experiencing life itself!

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