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A Death in the Family
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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 684579" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>Thanks, you guys.</p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p>Posting the hurt and the shame denatures the core of whatever this is, somehow. I am not walking around wondering whether I am wrong to feel as I do. I am not wondering what is the matter with me, that I feel as I do. I've written <em>and posted </em>feelings I am not supposed to feel. Somehow, the act of posting, the decision not to hide behind who I should be, how I should feel, stops toxicity in its tracks. What was on its way to becoming an unspeakable secret (who I am and how I feel versus what is acceptable <em>to the role I hold in my Family of Origin). </em></p><p></p><p><em>That's the center of the thing I am thinking through and around. That is the thing betrayed by these inappropriate feelings. </em></p><p></p><p><em>My role is to carry the potential for healing. Is to believe for all of us that we are good and decent and that we can come together. That I carry this role frees the Primary Abuser to engage as she wishes. I was forever holding the hurts, drying the tears, believing them and myself better than we were taught that we were. </em></p><p></p><p>Small steps, as we come real ~ as we come into an acceptance of our own realities.</p><p></p><p>So, that's good, then.</p><p></p><p>Thank you for witnessing for me. We have been discussing the value and validity of FOO Chronicles in this setting devoted to supporting one another over issues having to do with our children. Here is an interesting thing: Confessing our truths, telling the real feelings and vulnerabilities swirling around everything to do with our kids was the first bravery, the first defiant act of courage <em>and of love</em>. The public posting of the private reality is the healing act in our work here. I worked and worked through feelings on that first post. I did not intend to post because I don't like to look bad, first of all, and secondly, I felt ~ who knows. Because of everything we have been discussing regarding what is appropriate and what is offensive and etc. What could be more offensive than someone roaring on and on about her own feelings when a brother has died.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>It's like there is a place within us where feelings of rage and rejection and confusion and shame coalesce into some unrecognizable thing that, if we do not address those unacceptable feelings, takes on the weights and shades and toxicity of shame, over time. We hide it away, surprised at ourselves, and not sure how to understand anything about it. Maybe, what happens is that as more time passes, the now unrecognizable mass sinks further, sinks into that darker place echoing with traumatic fearsomeness having to do with abandonment. (I think that is all the feelings but you know what. I forgot love. I forgot deep regret. I forgot betrayal ~ forgot what it is to have believed in and accepted and excused the continuous, unremitting betrayal that loving someone who hates us becomes.)</p><p></p><p>Okay.</p><p></p><p>That betrayal I just described is where rage is seeded. That is the heart and core of it. I saw an ad for Scotch this morning on Facebook. This is the reality of Family Dinner. This is Braveheart imagery, which I've also worked with pretty extensively as I've come through this. The theme of betrayal runs like a river through the movie Braveheart. </p><p></p><p>In any event? In the ad for Scotch that I found this morning on my Facebook, I am that first really cute man wearing the kilt.</p><p></p><p>Well, roar. It won't come through. Here is the link.</p><p></p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]yu041VtS4IA[/MEDIA]</p><p></p><p>To follow this down, then: In another time, I would have been numb to rage. <em> In another time, I would have been the family peacemaker because that was my role. For all those years, that was my role. That is what the Family Dinner imagery was about: Role fulfillment. That is why it felt so right. That is why I excused them, again and again and again. In creating that role, I created imagery of a decency that I recognize as a real potential but that does not come to fruition when my people come together. A place of stability. A steady current through which all might swim and survive and come together over time. Hope, for all of us. That is the benefit to the dysfunctional family in the very rigid role categories assigned and in the particular role that I played. Here is an interesting aside: In describing me to someone new to the family, my mother used the words, "Cedar is the family romantic."</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>And here is the thing. I was sincere, in my role. As far as I can remember feeling, anyway. That is why I could excuse roaringly inappropriate behaviors time and time again without a second thought. </em></p><p></p><p><em>"That's just my mother." "That's just my sister."</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>The destroyers, the jealous ones, the victimizers who feed on the pain they've created, they were sincere as well. </em></p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>I am thinking of the article SWOT posted for us back in the beginning of FOO Chronicles. (jkf, I am always remembering the meaning of FOO in your language. :O) The article SWOT posted for us had to do with issues of role rigidity versus role flexibility in dysfunctional families. We all take on roles to one degree or another, all the time. Healthy families, healthy people do, too. It is how we empathize with a character in a book or a movie and maybe, with one another in person. We educate ourselves through our reflections in the eyes of those we love. Or, hate, I suppose. The article SWOT posted for us had to do with the correlation between the degree of role rigidity and the intensity of a given family's level of dysfunction.</p><p></p><p>That is my interpretation of SWOT's article.</p><p></p><p>But boy, does it ring true for me.</p><p></p><p>This dynamic too, so I believe, is begun with the creation of the Culture of Scarcity Brene Brown writes about.</p><p></p><p><em>***</em></p><p></p><p>This morning, I am ~ it feels like I've dodged a bullet. Not in the way I dealt with FOO issues, but in the way I put the traumatic imagery called by my brother's death away in my own heart. These times when we interact with our so determined families of origin are the times ~ so says me, and it looks like I know everything again this morning ~ when deep trauma is seeded in some echoing place we are afraid to go. (And again, this determination on the parts of our families to see us ruined is nothing personal ~ we all are playing the most incredibly transparent roles in our Families of Origin. I think no one is real but the Puppet Master.) Those traumatic seeds ripen, over time. The seeds ripen into those seemingly legitimate self concepts having to do with shame and self contempt and self hatred. I can see now that these concepts are the energy that makes the circle move ~ the energy that creates the whirlpool or the black hole or whichever imagery works for you in envisioning how negative self concept is formed.</p><p></p><p>The helping role is the only white role. There is another, but as it does not apply to my situation, I will not note it here. It resonates with beautiful emotion. Like Glinda, the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz.</p><p></p><p>And we already know I am whirling around like my pants are on fire roaring about rage and etc. (Liar, liar, pants on fire?) Well, yes.</p><p></p><p>Because the possibility that I am the Liar here is very real. Given the forever flexible nature of what is real, of what is true, and my certain knowledge that there is a determined consensus that the dysfunctional family of origin will come together <em>by</em> labeling me the Liar, that is the truth my own people will claim is the truth of me. </p><p></p><p>How sad for me that this is so.</p><p></p><p>Whether the labeling is done overtly (the shun), or covertly. (Crocodile tears of regret at the shun. Which have been shed copiously, and oh, so beautifully, by the person whose role it now is to fulfill Family Dinner.)</p><p></p><p>Oh, those rats.</p><p></p><p>Maybe, I would rather be the Family Dinner person. That was a very nice role to hold, actually.</p><p></p><p>I did so love that imagery.</p><p></p><p>I still do. Just not for them.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>This business of the whirlpool or of the black hole (which current theory surmises is what holds a galaxy like the Milky Way or any other galaxy, together) imagery where family of origin is concerned matters very much. <em> These energies are what fuel the ongoing family dynamic. This happens when the energies we don't want to address ~ rage / guilt / fear of rejection and etc ~ lose coherence, lump together somehow, and sink into the traumatic fear of abandonment place.</em></p><p></p><p><em>So easy then for the Primary Abuser to hook into the energy she needs to keep the whole dynamic viable.</em></p><p></p><p>That is why we have to know our truths ourselves, first. Winston Churchill was talking about England and the War, of course, but his contention that the only thing to fear is fear itself is true for every situation.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Given the intensity of emotion, this is an ongoing dynamic, in families like mine. We are re~traumatized, every time we come together. This too has its genesis in the Culture of Scarcity dynamic Brene Brown writes about.</p><p></p><p>The brother who died...my mother hated him. She was terrible to him all of his life. I don't need to process that here at this point. <em> His death will leave a vacuum in the family dynamic my mother set up and perpetuates to this day</em>. His personal life, who he was, what mattered to him...has been subsumed by the black hole spinning away at the center of this family's dynamic.</p><p></p><p>Already.</p><p></p><p>That makes me feel sad.</p><p></p><p>He was a nice man. Here is a lovely description of a troubled family: Charismatic, intense, talented.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>The answer:<em> </em>A quote from Julian of Norwich.</p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/incontext/article/julian/" target="_blank">https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/incontext/article/julian/</a></p><p></p><p>For those without time to read the article in its entirety, this is the part that matters:</p><p></p><p>“All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.”</p><p>― <a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/156980.Julian_of_Norwich" target="_blank">Julian of Norwich</a></p><p></p><p>The words are supposed to have been spoken by The Christ in response to Julian's question about why evil existed.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Here is another set of imageries from Facebook this morning. Imagine the balanced self concept this child will take from this mother. This is beautiful imagery, everyone. Remember as we come through these places in the psyche, that while we need to understand what did happen to us, what we need more is to know the feeling of healthy interaction so we can re-parent ourselves in the ways we require.</p><p></p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]2bnfhNU-AqQ[/MEDIA]</p><p></p><p>The three year old delivers a lamb. Her mother instructs her. It's beautiful. This is the nature of the energy we need to witness, and to re-parent ourselves with. If you are one of us, reading along but reluctant to post, it might be helpful for you to contrast the feel of your family of origin to the manner of the mother in the video toward her daughter. </p><p></p><p>Notice how the little girl is able to concentrate on what she is doing. Notice that she turns her face away from the mother at one point so that she can concentrate.</p><p></p><p>That is another difference I have noted between those of us raised in healthy, flexible families and those raised to fill the expectations of some Primary Abuser. Our attention will be squandered, instead of focusing easily and well on the task at hand, in vain efforts to please whoever our abusers are. Our attention, our ability to concentrate clearly and without distraction in our adult lives will be fractured, squandered, in that same way, when we have been raised to fracture.</p><p></p><p>Could this be what performance anxiety is about, I wonder. </p><p></p><p>The little girl is delighted, not with her accomplishment, not with her mother, but with the baby lamb.</p><p></p><p>With what is.</p><p></p><p>The mother does not even say "Good job."</p><p></p><p>She shares her knowledge. She celebrates, with the child, what is. And nothing more than what it is. She doesn't rattle on about how this or that is going to be.</p><p></p><p>What is is enough.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 684579, member: 17461"] Thanks, you guys. :O) Posting the hurt and the shame denatures the core of whatever this is, somehow. I am not walking around wondering whether I am wrong to feel as I do. I am not wondering what is the matter with me, that I feel as I do. I've written [I]and posted [/I]feelings I am not supposed to feel. Somehow, the act of posting, the decision not to hide behind who I should be, how I should feel, stops toxicity in its tracks. What was on its way to becoming an unspeakable secret (who I am and how I feel versus what is acceptable [I]to the role I hold in my Family of Origin). [/I] [I]That's the center of the thing I am thinking through and around. That is the thing betrayed by these inappropriate feelings. [/I] [I]My role is to carry the potential for healing. Is to believe for all of us that we are good and decent and that we can come together. That I carry this role frees the Primary Abuser to engage as she wishes. I was forever holding the hurts, drying the tears, believing them and myself better than we were taught that we were. [/I] Small steps, as we come real ~ as we come into an acceptance of our own realities. So, that's good, then. Thank you for witnessing for me. We have been discussing the value and validity of FOO Chronicles in this setting devoted to supporting one another over issues having to do with our children. Here is an interesting thing: Confessing our truths, telling the real feelings and vulnerabilities swirling around everything to do with our kids was the first bravery, the first defiant act of courage [I]and of love[/I]. The public posting of the private reality is the healing act in our work here. I worked and worked through feelings on that first post. I did not intend to post because I don't like to look bad, first of all, and secondly, I felt ~ who knows. Because of everything we have been discussing regarding what is appropriate and what is offensive and etc. What could be more offensive than someone roaring on and on about her own feelings when a brother has died. *** It's like there is a place within us where feelings of rage and rejection and confusion and shame coalesce into some unrecognizable thing that, if we do not address those unacceptable feelings, takes on the weights and shades and toxicity of shame, over time. We hide it away, surprised at ourselves, and not sure how to understand anything about it. Maybe, what happens is that as more time passes, the now unrecognizable mass sinks further, sinks into that darker place echoing with traumatic fearsomeness having to do with abandonment. (I think that is all the feelings but you know what. I forgot love. I forgot deep regret. I forgot betrayal ~ forgot what it is to have believed in and accepted and excused the continuous, unremitting betrayal that loving someone who hates us becomes.) Okay. That betrayal I just described is where rage is seeded. That is the heart and core of it. I saw an ad for Scotch this morning on Facebook. This is the reality of Family Dinner. This is Braveheart imagery, which I've also worked with pretty extensively as I've come through this. The theme of betrayal runs like a river through the movie Braveheart. In any event? In the ad for Scotch that I found this morning on my Facebook, I am that first really cute man wearing the kilt. Well, roar. It won't come through. Here is the link. [MEDIA=youtube]yu041VtS4IA[/MEDIA] To follow this down, then: In another time, I would have been numb to rage. [I] In another time, I would have been the family peacemaker because that was my role. For all those years, that was my role. That is what the Family Dinner imagery was about: Role fulfillment. That is why it felt so right. That is why I excused them, again and again and again. In creating that role, I created imagery of a decency that I recognize as a real potential but that does not come to fruition when my people come together. A place of stability. A steady current through which all might swim and survive and come together over time. Hope, for all of us. That is the benefit to the dysfunctional family in the very rigid role categories assigned and in the particular role that I played. Here is an interesting aside: In describing me to someone new to the family, my mother used the words, "Cedar is the family romantic." And here is the thing. I was sincere, in my role. As far as I can remember feeling, anyway. That is why I could excuse roaringly inappropriate behaviors time and time again without a second thought. [/I] [I]"That's just my mother." "That's just my sister." The destroyers, the jealous ones, the victimizers who feed on the pain they've created, they were sincere as well. [/I] *** I am thinking of the article SWOT posted for us back in the beginning of FOO Chronicles. (jkf, I am always remembering the meaning of FOO in your language. :O) The article SWOT posted for us had to do with issues of role rigidity versus role flexibility in dysfunctional families. We all take on roles to one degree or another, all the time. Healthy families, healthy people do, too. It is how we empathize with a character in a book or a movie and maybe, with one another in person. We educate ourselves through our reflections in the eyes of those we love. Or, hate, I suppose. The article SWOT posted for us had to do with the correlation between the degree of role rigidity and the intensity of a given family's level of dysfunction. That is my interpretation of SWOT's article. But boy, does it ring true for me. This dynamic too, so I believe, is begun with the creation of the Culture of Scarcity Brene Brown writes about. [I]***[/I] This morning, I am ~ it feels like I've dodged a bullet. Not in the way I dealt with FOO issues, but in the way I put the traumatic imagery called by my brother's death away in my own heart. These times when we interact with our so determined families of origin are the times ~ so says me, and it looks like I know everything again this morning ~ when deep trauma is seeded in some echoing place we are afraid to go. (And again, this determination on the parts of our families to see us ruined is nothing personal ~ we all are playing the most incredibly transparent roles in our Families of Origin. I think no one is real but the Puppet Master.) Those traumatic seeds ripen, over time. The seeds ripen into those seemingly legitimate self concepts having to do with shame and self contempt and self hatred. I can see now that these concepts are the energy that makes the circle move ~ the energy that creates the whirlpool or the black hole or whichever imagery works for you in envisioning how negative self concept is formed. The helping role is the only white role. There is another, but as it does not apply to my situation, I will not note it here. It resonates with beautiful emotion. Like Glinda, the Good Witch in the Wizard of Oz. And we already know I am whirling around like my pants are on fire roaring about rage and etc. (Liar, liar, pants on fire?) Well, yes. Because the possibility that I am the Liar here is very real. Given the forever flexible nature of what is real, of what is true, and my certain knowledge that there is a determined consensus that the dysfunctional family of origin will come together [I]by[/I] labeling me the Liar, that is the truth my own people will claim is the truth of me. How sad for me that this is so. Whether the labeling is done overtly (the shun), or covertly. (Crocodile tears of regret at the shun. Which have been shed copiously, and oh, so beautifully, by the person whose role it now is to fulfill Family Dinner.) Oh, those rats. Maybe, I would rather be the Family Dinner person. That was a very nice role to hold, actually. I did so love that imagery. I still do. Just not for them. *** This business of the whirlpool or of the black hole (which current theory surmises is what holds a galaxy like the Milky Way or any other galaxy, together) imagery where family of origin is concerned matters very much. [I] These energies are what fuel the ongoing family dynamic. This happens when the energies we don't want to address ~ rage / guilt / fear of rejection and etc ~ lose coherence, lump together somehow, and sink into the traumatic fear of abandonment place.[/I] [I]So easy then for the Primary Abuser to hook into the energy she needs to keep the whole dynamic viable.[/I] That is why we have to know our truths ourselves, first. Winston Churchill was talking about England and the War, of course, but his contention that the only thing to fear is fear itself is true for every situation. *** Given the intensity of emotion, this is an ongoing dynamic, in families like mine. We are re~traumatized, every time we come together. This too has its genesis in the Culture of Scarcity dynamic Brene Brown writes about. The brother who died...my mother hated him. She was terrible to him all of his life. I don't need to process that here at this point. [I] His death will leave a vacuum in the family dynamic my mother set up and perpetuates to this day[/I]. His personal life, who he was, what mattered to him...has been subsumed by the black hole spinning away at the center of this family's dynamic. Already. That makes me feel sad. He was a nice man. Here is a lovely description of a troubled family: Charismatic, intense, talented. *** The answer:[I] [/I]A quote from Julian of Norwich. [URL]https://www.christianhistoryinstitute.org/incontext/article/julian/[/URL] For those without time to read the article in its entirety, this is the part that matters: “All shall be well, and all shall be well and all manner of thing shall be well.” ― [URL='https://www.goodreads.com/author/show/156980.Julian_of_Norwich']Julian of Norwich[/URL] The words are supposed to have been spoken by The Christ in response to Julian's question about why evil existed. *** Here is another set of imageries from Facebook this morning. Imagine the balanced self concept this child will take from this mother. This is beautiful imagery, everyone. Remember as we come through these places in the psyche, that while we need to understand what did happen to us, what we need more is to know the feeling of healthy interaction so we can re-parent ourselves in the ways we require. [MEDIA=youtube]2bnfhNU-AqQ[/MEDIA] The three year old delivers a lamb. Her mother instructs her. It's beautiful. This is the nature of the energy we need to witness, and to re-parent ourselves with. If you are one of us, reading along but reluctant to post, it might be helpful for you to contrast the feel of your family of origin to the manner of the mother in the video toward her daughter. Notice how the little girl is able to concentrate on what she is doing. Notice that she turns her face away from the mother at one point so that she can concentrate. That is another difference I have noted between those of us raised in healthy, flexible families and those raised to fill the expectations of some Primary Abuser. Our attention will be squandered, instead of focusing easily and well on the task at hand, in vain efforts to please whoever our abusers are. Our attention, our ability to concentrate clearly and without distraction in our adult lives will be fractured, squandered, in that same way, when we have been raised to fracture. Could this be what performance anxiety is about, I wonder. The little girl is delighted, not with her accomplishment, not with her mother, but with the baby lamb. With what is. The mother does not even say "Good job." She shares her knowledge. She celebrates, with the child, what is. And nothing more than what it is. She doesn't rattle on about how this or that is going to be. What is is enough. Cedar [/QUOTE]
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