I M Perfect lady

Tag: you

  • Who are You Bringing to This New Year?

    I made no resolutions for this upcoming year; I promised it nothing, hoped on even less, and expect zero from the year…for I now realize it isn't up to a year, an event, a somebody or something to deliver to me that which I desire…it is up to me.

    Expecting things from a new year is pretty much hopeless, for the year is waiting on you.

    You and only you will make 2012 a year to be remembered.

    However you spent last year, you will spend this year, Unless and Until you change that which you are doing, saying and being.

    Last year for me was one of great learning, yet on the outside the average person wouldn't have been able to see the inner changes that went on inside.

    My letting go on the inside was big.  Letting go of things having to be a certain way or expecting things flowing and following a certain trail…disappeared.  

    I had been slowly loosening my grip on controlling things, and last year I was shown clearly how it isn't up to me. 

    While it is discerning to stand in a place of No Hope, No Expectations, No Control….it is very freeing. It isn't that I am hopeless, but that I am no longer hoping for things to be different than they are, nor are my expectations exceeding that which the Universe delivers.

    I feel that I am closer than ever to being on the thin line of Now…and singing the same words of the Universe; One verse.

    Just as I can't expect my body to lose weight without me participating, I can't expect the New Year to improve without me being an active partner.

    The year is just a pile of days and how we live each day builds up the flavor of the New Year…and really each moment of every day.

    Somehow we overlook this moment in time.

    Yet yesterday was the first day we added to the Pile called New Year, what was it full of???  Today is the second helping we are adding, what are you doing today?

    The year is of your making…this year is one in your life…Your life is being drawn as you walk through your days.  What you do each day is you.  

    Each day you live your authentic truthful self is singing with the Universe…each day you put aside your feelings, and not say what you need to say, is another day given to denial.

    We keep thinking denial is a big thing, but it is actually many little moments that go by where we are not ourselves.

    We keep expecting the year to deliver to us authenticity, realness, truth, and strength, when it is our choice in each moment of each new year, that decides if our year will actually make a new us.

    We somehow see the new year as a clean slate, when actually it is a year of new moments awaiting a new you.  A you that will arrive that will make a new choice.

    The only way you will get a new year, is if the you who arrives at each new day is willing to act and speak differently.  

    The year follows you…not you it.

    We somehow have this all backwards, that you can leap upon the back of a white new year and be totally different, that the year will save you, create a newness that hasn't been part of you prior.

    When in fact, just as we wake up to each day and greet each moment of time, we too step into the new year.

    It isn't about the year….it is about the You in the year.

    You bring all of you to this new year.  All your actions of past sit with you as you sit staring at the new year.

    Who did you bring to this new year?

    What does she look like and act like?

    Is she someone you would want as a friend and trust as a partner?  

    We keep looking for the year to change us into someone we may like or even love better, when the year has zero power.

    Each of us brings to the year a self…and each of us is the designer and creator of that self.

    A successful year to me is one that has required more and more of me and challenged me to be more of myself, not less.  It has shown me places where I didn't arrive, where I denied myself and ducked in order to be 'liked/approved of/or loved.

    What I bring to this year, is a me that wants to uncover more aspects of me that are not authentic. I want to live at peace with who I am and love being me…and finding joy along the way.  

    Who are you bringing to this New Year?  

     

     

     

  • I Let Myself Go

    In "Codependent No More," by Melody Beatte, she writes about boundaries.

    ""Set boundaries, but make sure they're our boundaries. The things we are sick of, can't stand, and make threats about, may be clues to some boundaries that we need set. They may also be clues to changes we need to make within ourselves. Mean what we say and say what we mean. People get angry at us for setting boundaries; They CAN'T use us anymore. They may try to help us feel guilty so we will remove our boundary and return to the old system of letting them use or abuse us. Don't feel guilty and don't back down. We can stick to our boundaries and enforce them. Be consistent. We will probably be tested more than once on every boundary we set. People do that to see if we are serious, especially if we haven't meant what we said in the past. As Codependents we have made very empty threats. We lose our credibility then wonder why people don't take us serious. Tell people what our boundaries are once, quietly, in peace. What our level of tolerance, so the pendulum doesn't swing too far to either extreme." Melody

    When we take our boundaries serious, others will as well.  And if you have never said no, no will seem shocking and unloving toward them, for in the past they could depend on your yes or that you would back up and lower your boundary.

    Lowering boundaries, lowers your sense of self. You are pushing your self into being someone you soon will not even recognize.

    Another thing Melody said was,

    "Most of us don't have boundaries. Boundaries are limits that say: "This is how far I shall go. This is what I will or won't do for you. This is what I won't tolerate from you." 

    "Most of us begin relationships with boundaries. We had certain expectations and we entertained certain ideas about what we would or wouldn't' tolerate from those people. Alcoholism and other compulsive disorders laugh in the face of limits. The disease not only push on our boundaries, they boldly step across them. Each time the disease pushes or steps across our limits we give in. We move our boundaries back, giving our disease more room to work. As the disease pushes more, we give more until we are tolerating and doing things we said we would never do. Later, this process of "increased tolerance" of inappropriate behaviors may reverse. We may become totally intolerant of even the most human behaviors. In the beginning we make excuses for the person's inappropriate behavior; toward the end, there is no excuse."

    "Not only do many of us begin tolerating abnormal unhealthy and inappropriate behaviors, we take it one step further; we convince ourselves these behaviors are normal and what we deserve We may become so familiar with verbal abuse and disrespectful treatment that we don't even recognize when these things are happening. But deep inside, an important part of us knows. Our selves know and will tell us if we will listen." MB

    "…compulsive disorders laugh in the face of limits. The disease not only push on our boundaries, they boldly step across them. Each time the disease pushes or steps across our limits we give in. We move our boundaries back, giving our disease more room to work…"

    Who truly knew that our lack of pushing back when they push us is the exact key or in fact makes More room for the abuse to be.  

    While I didn't know it at the time, I can see it plain as day now. 

    It is up to us to set firm boundaries and each time you wobble and get pushed into doing something you don't want to do, you have expanded the area for abuse to play and move and freely be.

    This is the dance of abuse; it pushes and we give up our ground.

    Each time we stay silent, we give up ground.

    Each time we fail to follow through with our threats, "this is the last time…" it wins.

    We are not only playing with abuse; WE are Letting it win.  

    "If you don't stand for something, you will fall for anything."

    Usually, we fall for we love that person, we have a long history, a past and a future we want, so we overlook and blink as they cross another boundary, as we lose ground one more time, as we are pushed back into a place where we are without restraint.

    I guess we do this until…  Until we either go so far back that we lose a sense of life and ourself, or we come bounding back fearlessly taking back our lives.

    And when we do, the pusher of our boundaries are in for a shock…where once we were soft, we are now as hard as a rock.  

    My husband said of me, "You didn't draw your line in the sand, but in cement…"

    I am firm now with boundaries and no amount of guilt on their part will back me up.  I am finally standing up strong…

    What is so hard is that you have to begin however far back you have been pushed, in the low spot of no boundaries…and climb up one step at a time.

    Each time you say what you mean and follow through, you gain a boundary…and with each boundary comes self esteem, or a sense of knowing and loving of self.

    I would cheer me on as they would holler and rail against me.  And I knew, they were testing my waters, to see if I was serious…it was even shocking to me to see just how serious I was.

    I began so far back that I was almost gone, and it was a struggle to undo all the years of relationships without borders, where I flowed into their worlds losing me. I reversed the cycle…I came alive in places where in the past I let myself go.

     

     

     

  • What we endured.

    From Martha Beck's book, Leaving the Saints
    "All my life, I'd read and reread a thousand religious epigraphs to the effect that "You shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free."  I'd always been told this had to do with joining the true religion, learning the true description of the Holy Trinity, memorizing the true Commandments.  Now, with that gong like tone thrumming through me, it all seemed so much simpler.  The truth I needed to be free was simply the reality of my own life: This is what I feel.  This is what happened to me. To know these small truths was to know myself; to speak them was to connect with my real self, other human beings, and God."
    Martha was told by many people she was not allowed to tell her story of abuse, that the church's reputation was on the line, that her father needed to be held up as a pillar of its community, that many mormon spiritual lives depended upon her silence… except one woman came to her.
    "Martha…I don't believe God would ever ask anyone to endure that sort of thing without talking about it.  No one. No matter what."  Her voice when through me like an arrow, through all the pain and confusion and fear to something at my very center. My body filled up with a kind of resonance, like one of the huge gongs I'd seen in Shinto shrines that make the air throb when they ring.  It shattered my reserve, and as usual, I started crying.  Rosemary just sat there, not a shred of tension or resistance in her presence.  "Was it your father?" she asked, quietly.  I covered my face with my hands to keep myself from falling apart, but it was like trying to protect a sand castle from high tide. "I didn't tell you!" I gasped, when I could speak.  "Where did you hear that?"  She shrugged and tapped her chest. I felt that sense of resonance again, crumbling all the barriers of my mind.
     "You can't tell anyone!" I whispered.  "And I can't tell anyone! Ever! I can't!"  
    "Martha, listen to me."  Rosemary's voice was no louder, but it had taken on a peculiar intensity.  I remember thinking that I should pay close attention. I was right. The next three words Rosemary Douglas spoke changed my life forever.  The moment she said them, I knew that this was the stable patch of earth in the landslide, the single great spiritual truth upon which I could build my life now that all other foundations had proven frail and uncertain. The words weren't God loves you, or Jesus is Lord, or Keep the faith.
    Rosemary put her hand on mine, looked right in my soggy eyes and said, "You are Free."
    We are not free until we can speak our story, to tell of our experiences…and sadly we wait for the permission of those who hurt us.  What a great gift this woman gave her, to say, "I don't believe God would ever ask anyone to endure that sort of thing without talking about it.  No one. No matter what."
    At times this blog feels as if I don't have the right.  But I agree with Rosemary, we must talk about what we endured.

  • A False Appearance Called You.

    Between the comments, a conversation and reading, it came to me that this isn’t unusual this indirect conversations. And in fact, the bigger the ‘secret’ or point the bigger the fear and the consequences or fall out will be.

    There is a payoff for not talking directly, it allows you to be in a pretend safe zone. Get that, a pretend safe zone or a pretend friendship, or a pretend relationship, a pretend love.

    A pretend love. What is that?

    And how is it that we are more comfortable being a pretend self, than being a truthful one.

    I know I was fricking inept when it came to being myself. I had no clue. I was frustrated, anxious, nervous, a mess, a total basket case, BEING me.

    How is that possible, that we wear the mask of pretend with ease even if it doesn’t cover up the resentment and fear that lies beneath?

    What I know for sure is that we fear a big fall out equal to the level of fear we have IF we were to be ourselves and REALLY say what is on our minds…as well as the size or the extent of the secret.

    In my family it was gigantic, earth shattering big.

    In other families it is huge and life changing for sure.

    But we fail to realize is that it will change the pretend fearful weird exchanges we have with each other to truthful ones.

    I recall my sister asking to be my friend on face book (after a four year silence and vast differences)…and being this new frank self…I asked, “why do you want to be my friend and told her she may not like the new me and that she best to go to my blog and read.” She came back and said, “Nope, not that interested”.

    While that hurt, it also set us both free from pretending. I didn’t want to begin a second time around with her and leave my frankness behind.

    Now it seems quite silly and childish or immature to even entertain the idea of pretending to get along…And that whole sentence is wrong for little children are known for their frankness.

    So, maybe it is not silly or childish, but just lingering on junior high, where we will do anything to get along, to be liked, to be part of a group. We pretend to get along and in doing so live a pretend life.

    That to me is so tragic, that many many people live their whole lives as somebody else…or for somebody else.

    Self loving is not ever having to pretend. I LOVE that.

    I used to pretend to have no fear of my father.

    I used to pretend that I had no resentment against my mother.

    I pretended that she made wise choices or that they didn’t bother me.

    I pretended and pretended and pretended, until I lost complete sight of who I was.

    I looked up the definition of pretend. “To give a false appearance.”

    Yes, I was afraid of my father and I acted like I wasn’t.

    Each and every time we pretend or cover up a feeling or not speak our truth, we lose a little bit more of ourselves…and gain more and more of a false appearance.

    Who knew that by sparing another you would create a false appearance or false self. And here is the deal, you are only fooling your self that if you don’t address each issue, that they fade away and disappear.

    They don’t.

    They are with you always.

    For your feelings can’t be erased by pretending.

    Love can’t be formed by pretending. Friendships are not bonded deeply in pretending. All pretending does is pretend that it isn’t so…when it is.

    Isn’t it funny, you thought you were fooling another when indeed you were fooling your self, creating a false appearance called you.

  • Spoiled Brat?

    Sarah Ban Breathnach writes in her book, “Moving On,” let’s take a fresh look at the word that saps our strength often:

    Scared.

    “What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?” wonders Toni Morrison. Fair enough question. Woman have always know how to comfort the fears of others; we just don’t remember to use the same tender, loving, tactics on ourselves. So the next time you feel a random panic attack starting, take a deep breath, and transpose the “a” and the “c” in “scared” and you’ll find not only another word but a world of difference. You’ll uncover the

    Sacred

    Doesn’t that make you feel better already? It works for me, every time. I’d be willing to bet the house that your sacred, like mine, is very close – the walls surrounding you or the floorboards supporting you, even if they need a good scrub. The best definition I ever heard of fear is “False Events Appearing Real.” When I am anxious I notice that my fears seem to be speculative future-tense marauders. Will there be enough? What will I do? How will I cope? The best way I know how to disarm such fear is by keeping a Gratitude Journal. A Gratitude Journal is a polite, daily thank-you note to the Universe- and a reminder to yourself of the very real blessings you have now. In this moment. You know how insulted you are after you’ve knocked yourself out for your kids and all you get in return is surly silence. What am I raising you probably wonder, a bunch of brats? Well, an ancient spiritual axiom teaches us, “As below, so above.”

    Because you’re not spoiled rotten, at the end of every day write down five things or moments you experienced for which to be thankful. Small pauses that brought a smile or a sense of relief during the day. The kindness of somebody holding your place in the post office line when you have a lot of packages to get from the car. The plumber showing up on time. Fitting in to last summer’s shorts. A hug from a friend. A fortune cookie with just the right message. Saying no to a bake sale without guilt. Easily switching carpooling days. Getting an extension on the deadline. Better yet, meeting the deadline, Phew!

    We think it’s the big moments that define our lives – the promotion, the new baby, the renovated kitchen, the wedding. But the narrative of our lives is written in the small, the simple and the common. The overlooked. The discarded. The reclaimed. Life is not made up of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years, but the moments. You must experience each one before you can appreciate it.

    Whether you are chopping carrots, shampooing your hair, writing a memo, making love, talking on the phone, walking the dog, or eating an apple, savor those sensations involved. All of those moments, whether happy, routine, or even painful are Life’s heartbeats.
    Sarah

    In the past six years I have been made to be much more sensitive to each of life’s heartbeats, to feel that which is in reality now, and even how life seems to be lived on a pinhead of time, how it literally is the heartbeat of life.

    This moment, the one we are breathing in is where life happens and to be grateful or even to see all that arrives is overwhelming.

    I love how she says we could be like spoiled brats and not even pay attention to all that the Universe gives us each day.

    Yesterday while delivering mail in the high winds and whiteout conditions, I focused on the black bare roads at times, and was so grateful to see their blackness in midst of swirling white. “Thank you black roads!”

    When you begin to look for things to be grateful for, you will find more and more grateful things.

    I will just watch how I go about my days, how I approach or leave little moments in time, and I a grateful child or a spoiled brat?

  • Find Their Own Way…

    The battle of the wills end when you allow the other to have free will, it is pretty hard to fight with freedom.

    The tighter you hold and the more you force, the less the other person can feel and find their own sense of what it is they want to do.

    When I was in the beginning stages of my mental breakdown, my husband and I found a place to stand that left us both in total freedom, a place called “I love you today.”

    In this spot, it allowed each of us to change our minds and to gauge our own feelings about whether we wanted to stay together. This free space to be yourself, to feel that which you feel and to express it daily allowed us the time to re-configure a new normal in our relationship.

    We fell into this spot after weeks and months of feeling the instability each of us had during the most stressful event in our marriage, Me not knowing who I was.

    Pretty hard to promise tomorrow, when today is unknown.

    It felt so much easier to breathe when we embraced the unknown and lived presently with each day and even each moment.

    “I love you today” is an honest and alive relationship and we both promised the other that if and when we didn’t want to be here we would tell the other.

    It isn’t a piece of paper, the ‘happiness’ of our children, or a million other reasons that folks stay together, but instead we individually get to choose if we fit together, if we are happy here, if we enjoy this place, if we are at peace here, if it is a spot for us to grow and change….

    It is like a free-range relationship, where each has the freedom to be who we are, and when who we are no longer works together, we will be brave enough and honest enough to let the other know.

    I just don’t feel then, that we can blame the other; we will always hold the power within us.

    I love you today, and if it changes I will let you know.

    I am thinking this same idea can be used upon our children. Instead of raising children who must remain in our pen (religion, mind set, pathway, etc), where we tell them how to be and grow, that we instead open the gate and let them roam free.

    Let their will be done.

    Let them decide which way to go and how to be.

    It releases both of us to be who it is we were meant to be.

    This reminds me of the paragraph from one of Bryon Katie’s books,

    “I don’t know what is best for me, or you, or the world. I don’t try to impose my will on you or anyone else. I don’t want to change you or improve you of convert you or help you or heal you. I just welcome things as they come and go. That’s true love. The best way of leading people is to let them find their own way.”

  • Free to be you.

    At the end of Dr. Jill Bolte’s book, “My Stroke of Insight”, she writes what she needed the most to heal, and I too would like to share what was most beneficial to me as I made my way out of the legacy of dysfunction.

    When you wake up and find that you lived in denial for 46 years, you are smack dab in the middle of a pretend life and you need to begin finding truths everywhere and living truth.

    Here are some things in no particular order…

    The book, “Loving What is” by Byron Katie helped me embrace the idea of acceptance and how it is much easier to walk with reality and to separate whose business is whose. My lines of responsibility blurred and I was lost in other people’s lives and absent from my own.

    “Be Here Now” by Eckhart Tolle helped me live in this moment while unraveling the past. Showed me how to not deny but to embrace the moment right here and all that it delivered.

    Martha Beck’s book “Leaving the Saints” showed me the way abuse blinds you and how the family situation and religion has a great impact on how you then go forward, abused and confused.

    My brother’s ears listened, his eyes sought the truth like I, and his hand reached forward in healing always. Together we bravely walked deeply into what we had experienced to find where we lost ourselves, felt the pain or discovered the things we missed, clues that led us to our self. It greatly helps to have one family member in a dysfunctional family that wants to get out as bad as you, that wants to end the legacy in their life. His understanding of dysfunction as well as his desire to be free was the perfect companion on my journey. His willingness to bravely let go of family in dysfunction to be whole gave me strength.

    My husband bravely walking with me in the unknown, of me and the future, of allowing me space to figure it out, of hearing the truth and not fighting it. He made no demands for me to Not change, nor did he make demands on how I should be, he simply stood by and let me find me. We both had no idea if when I healed if there would be a we. Love is letting go and being free. We found a love that has no strings, you be you and I be me kinda love. His freedom was key.

    Friends. Well, I lost some old friends and old family members who were unable to bear the new me and my new found truths, and I am way okay in letting them go, for I don’t want to make them believe that which they don’t.

    New friends arrived, deeper, wiser, more understanding and caring, they match my new me.

    Playing in Art was my saving grace, a place where I still could play with colors designs in fabric, creating and letting go of the heaviness of dysfunction, there I felt free to be. My Art carried messages to me, like letters from the Universe, showing me I was on the right path and that I would be okay.

    I M Perfect Lady blog, is a key component as well, it has be a sacred space for me to bring my truths, to lay them on the white sheet and to dissect each morsel and to find answers. While I often hoped it would help another person, I have selfishly gained the most. It has beautifully displayed all aspects of me, the broken wounded little girl, the mental survival woman, and the sprouts of the real me. I grew to love this imperfect me and know that each part is perfectly me! There is no part you could take out, for each part hold up a section of my life, each part has a hand in making me me!

    What we need the most is freedom and for others to hold the space of our innocence until we can find our way back.

    We need to use reality like Braille watching all actions as they brilliantly say what words can try to cover; we need to have narrow vision staying with the evidence of actions.

    As we tear down our life of denial, we need to build a life in reality, we need to build up our strength, add wholeness to support what we want to become, while saying good bye to the things that kept us down.

    We need to find the stamina to go against old beliefs and life patterns.

    We need the courage to face all we turned away from.

    We need to reconnect to our bodies and yoga is a spectacular way to join, the mind, body and soul.

    Mostly we need the space to be free.

    Abuse steals our power; we need to become powerful again from the inside out.

    Abuse steals our love; we need to become loving of self.

    Abuse steals our faith; we need to become faithful to self.

    Abuse steals our trust; we need to learn how to trust our judgment, our value, our morals again.

    Denial or dysfunction or abuse has us living from the outside in, where we will please other before self.
    We have to turn ourselves inside out and begin living from inside. Listening to our quiet inner voice, and following our feelings inside.

    Mostly become one. Separated from the leagues and groups and piles of folks that wanted us to be something for them. We need to become a sovereign nation of one. One wave in the Ocean of the Universe.

    What is great about victims is that they bring love, trust and faith and give it to another. In order to heal, they now need to use all those great gifts to heal themselves, to now treat thy self, turn inward.

    All my strengths I had for helping others, I used to help me. I became my biggest cheerleader, my strongest friend; I learned to love my self.

    It is like having the wounded heal the wounded.
    The ultimate healing, I who was broken healed myself.

    The blind learning to see.
    The deaf learning to hear.
    The dumb wanting to know.

    The desire begins with you.

    “Ask and yea shall receive.”

    Seeks the answers of who you are and you will move into being you.

    It all begins in wanting to know the truth.

    The truth shall set you free.

    Free to be you.

  • Perfectly you!

    The reason I began this blog or writing for that matter, was that I found myself upside down in an upright world, my insides didn’t match reality, my dysfunction led me around the world not me.

    This me, I called the mental woman and she resided in me, in my thoughts and in my beliefs, she had ownership of this vessel and steered my actions from a fear based setting.

    I lived governed by fear and did most things to ward off the impending doom, for if and when the doom arrived, I would die.

    You see, once upon a time, a little girl was in a delightful safe world and out of nowhere, in the midst of her caring kindness an ugly monster appeared, plunging her into a state of terror.

    Once this terror is felt and no one releases you from it, you then set forth with the Fight or Flight Switch always on ON.

    My past six years has been to re-set that switch, to not respond in terror, but in love.

    When my daughter’s psyche hung in the balance, when I could see the abuse’s affects, my Mental Lady, my Wounded child, and My Loving Awareness all arose.

    It was the epic battle within me.

    One moment I was writhing in terror, frozen, feet ice cold dripping in sweat, a child without a way out.

    The next I was a mental woman taking control with needs that overshadow my daughter, fear that I had somehow allowed this to happen, it was my fault.

    And the most wonderful delightful experience I have ever felt was to be present with my child, to sit with her and her pain and see nothing but innocence, feel nothing but love.

    The contrast of these three individuals that I vacillated between had me swing to the highest of highs to the lowest of lows.

    It was like my past ghosts and my present awareness engaged in many battles, taking me on a wild life review.

    My views of her, my views of self, my extraordinary view of my husband, was like an epic play and I played each role.

    I feel utterly blessed and filled with gratitude that the most predominate woman within me is Loving Awareness.

    To live the rest of my life in this mode, riding behind
    Big as a house Heart, means to me that the Universal love, the essence of nature, the God Spirit, is leading me forward, that the clutches of evil and fear have been released.

    I am a woman who has been to the depths of hell and have emerged brighter, more loving and kind to my self.

    I know if I can travel this road, than my daughter and all girls and women who find them selves like I did, can do it.

    You do it by loving your Imperfections until they become perfectly you!

  • My feelings are me.

    In reading, “A Course in Weight Loss” by Marianne Williamson, it came to me how we are so untruthful with our feelings, so neglectful, so mean, how we run away ducking and hiding, how the planet at large doesn’t like to see sad feelings.

    Feelings of grief or despair, feelings that lower the energies within, a dark foreboding feeling, the feelings that maybe we are not one with reality.

    It seems that at least in my house, we were to skip over reality and that alone was the cause of most dark feelings.

    I am thinking, and I may be wrong, but that when you walk hand in hand with reality, you will be less sad, if you are not wanting things to be different.

    It is the wanting to change what can’t be changed that brings sadness.

    To not be who you are.

    When there is a separation between what is and what you want, that the most suffering happens.

    When you surrender in agreement and sit with what is, although you feel sad to let your dream go, eventually you will see the peace of being in sync with the Universe.

    My greatest sadness was that I didn’t have a dad.
    It wasn’t that I had a pedophile.
    Once I got over the fact that I couldn’t have a dad, when I accepted I was a girl without a man who could be a dad dad, I was much more content and at peace, I was no longer fighting reality.

    To me, when you feel deep sadness I wonder if you are in a place of wishful thinking, mad dreaming, reality changing, if you are struggling hard with acceptance.

    Sadness has a message.
    What is it saying?

    To me I have lots of sorrow escaping in yoga, past sorrows, past dreams and expectations that never came to bear. Even new sadness comes in along with a future dream, which can be no more.

    Some of my sadness that escapes in yoga is the little girl finally telling me where I hadn’t been with her.

    Where she was left alone while I dreamed on.

    Where she was in reality and I escaped.
    Tears flow of rejoining, connecting and being one.

    I stay with my feelings now and find them very enlightening no matter how dark and confusing and restricting, for underneath the tangled mess is a part of me that has been lost and unfelt and needs to be tended to.

    All feelings are signals, which steer you to live authentically as you.

    They are not about the other person, the feelings are specifically made for you, they are your prized possessions, they are what makes you you.

    When you stand with your feelings, you are standing up for you.

    When you cover them up, you are pretending to be someone else.

    My feelings are me.

  • A new you emerges…

    “When patterns are broken, new worlds emerge.” ~Tuli Kupferberg

    Somehow this quote paints a scene of great Art, of stepping out of the box and being presented with a wondrous new world.

    In my experience breaking an old pattern requires stamina, fearlessness, standing out and being different, walking away from familiar and entering into the unknown, which I guess is where the new world emerges.

    Even if the new world is much healthier, happier and more peaceful, there is sorrow as the old pattern dies.

    It is a piece of your personality or a fragment of you that is being disposed of.

    If I were to pile up all the old patterns that I broke, you would see a whole person standing there.

    Her pattern had shades and tones of abuse and dysfunction, faint colors of washed out places of low self-esteem, heavy dark corridors of unawareness and brainwashing along with righteously wrong values.

    She was an enigma, a very confusing mystery to unravel, a body of truth and a head of fiction.

    The breaking of the pattern was all headwork, my patterns of thoughts and beliefs that didn’t match reality and I had to work to reconfigure them in my head.

    It was going backwards in time and reworking or removing the patterns I had set in my head.

    Patterns of me that were formed by childhood, patterns that reflect those who raised me, those who cared for me, doing the best they knew how.

    It was their pattern that I was living by, not mine.

    I was a designed for their use not mine.

    When patterns are broken, a new you emerges….