Copa, I love this way you are thinking. You are thinking like a person making connections so deep there are no words, only symbols. This is a courageous act, and a very difficult thing.
This morning, I am thinking about Brene Brown's concept of the gladiator, rising from the bloodied sand. How he defines himself now, as he comes to his feet, is the only thing that matters.
That is what you are saying too, Copa.
Here is a quote for you, for your courage:
The warrior learns the spiritual realm by dwelling on the cutting edge of the sword, standing at the edge of the fire pit, venturing right up to the edge of starvation if necessary. Vibrant and intense living is the warrior's form of worship.
Hayes
And another:
The most difficult part of traditional taekwondo is not learning the first kick or punch. It is not struggling to remember the motions of a poomsae or becoming acquainted with Korean culture. Rather, it is taking that first step across the threshold of the dojong door. This is where the roads diverge, where choices are made that will last a lifetime.
Doug Cook
Taekwondo ~ A Path to Excellence
***
Cedar, I still do feel the way she intended me to feel. Humiliated. That somebody (she, my sister) could, would do that to me. I have not gotten over it. It still horrifies me as much as it would have if somebody violated me. Perhaps even more.
You
were violated, Copa. By someone you knew and trusted
as a sister. Imagine the depth of that betrayal; now, imagine the insidious, unremitting, unseen betrayals that went before and that surely came after.
The banality of evil.
Here is a secret: Brought up in the self-same environment, we too learned betrayal and victimization and secret alliance. We learned it first, in fact. The difference is that we refused it.
The sisters did not.
Or they would not be as they are.
Nothing to do with us.
Here is another quote:
The Talmud states, "do not be daunted by the enormity of the world's grief. Do justly now, love mercy now, walk humbly now. You are not obligated to complete the work but neither are you free to abandon it.
Bridges McCall
***
Our Families of Origin were so unhealthy, Copa. It breaks my heart a little bit to know it. I stumble over the underlying reality, and over the why and the win.
We should never have been hurt in those ways. Not us, not our sibs, not the mothers or the fathers in whatever the secret underlying dynamic of their marriages was.
No one should be hurt, like that.
***
What is done is done. We were more vulnerable ~ all of us ~ by a thousand times, as young women (or young men) than we are, now. My heart breaks, for that beautiful young woman I was. I had no idea.
Isn't that something.
Our purpose here is to ferret out the why behind those belief systems that darkened everything they covered, expose them for what they are, and heal into strength and wholeness. Whatever the others do or did is not our business. Strength and wholeness is: Nothing to protect. Ultimately then, is exactly the category you posted in the final paragraph of your last post: acceptance ~ of ourselves, and of everyone we love, without judging of course,, if we can manage it, but more importantly, without fear.
I loved what you posted.
Loved the truth in it.
Is is what it is.
***
We have been taught to believe that abject self abasement (taking responsibility whether we had anything to do with whatever it was or not) that rolling defenselessly belly up at the mercy of the thing that is destroying us, is the correct way to survive. And we did survive. But those behaviors that were necessary then, when we lived the illusion of Plato's Cave with a bullet, are worse than pointless, now.
When our children say, "Mom, I'm in trouble.", abject self abasement or seeing Mom immediately self-destructing in any of a thousand million ways is not going to help us, now.
Cedar, furiously working her needlework, continues.
As much as I post about the sisters, this has nothing to do with the sisters. What it does have to do with is exactly how you opened your first post: What it does to us to have been treated like that
by our own families. Think how it feels to have been honked at on the highway; how it feels to be disregarded and put on hold forever and finally, to talk to someone whose accent we cannot understand. Imagine the cost to us then, when someone we love, someone who knows us intimiately, treats us as someone without value.
These kinds of things do not happen in healthy families, Copa.
So, here is the question that matters; the only question that matters: Why do we listen? What is it about us that leads us to believe anyone else's behaviors define us?
That is a very good question, Copa.
Remember the boorish man who suggested you had no boundaries?
The issue is not whether you did or did not have a boundary to call your own. The issue is why you responded as you did.
For me: The issue is not whether or not I am a manipulator. Of course I am. The issue is why I decided that destroying myself was an adequate or appropriate response.
Same dynamic.
External versus internal locus of control.
Rolling belly up.
But why? What is the dynamic there, Copa?
***
They were brought up to do it Copa, and we were brought up to take the hit. I posted yesterday about the triangle that may have existed between the three of us: Between the mother and the sister, and us. It had to have been so Copa, because we are the persons easily victimized, without defense, to sadists. Even now, as adults, we somehow believe the luncheon was not excellent enough, or the condo on the beach was not excellent enough, and that is why the sisters behave so outrageously badly. That is it something in us that calls those kinds of behaviors in the otherwise decent persons of our sisters. But Copa, if we look just a little further afield...our sisters aren't very decent people to anyone, at all.
Yet, we believe them.
Why.
In that answer lies our freedom, not only from the sisters, but from the miserable, twisted hurtfulness of our Pasts. All of it, Copa.
***
You are still seeing the sister's behaviors through the eyes of childhood Copa.
Stop protecting the sister from what you know to be true about her. Like the mothers (in my case, this is certain), the sisters are not who we believed them to be. How is it we have been able to accept that, based on their words and their actions and their betrayals of every smallest decency or loyalty, the sisters do not love us.
The sisters do not love us.
Accepting that was all about beating ourselves up and believing ourselves worth less. We looked at the evidence and drew conclusions and it was painful but it is what it is.
Why then, given that we had no trouble at all declaring ourselves to have been found unworthy by our own sisters, do we have trouble believing the sisters to be less than we'd believed. What is that thinking pattern that tells us rolling belly up is a correct way to think.
Again, like Dororthy in the Wizard of Oz, we were always able to go home, Copa. We had to want to badly enough to follow the Yellow Brick Road. To make it through the poppy field. (Denial) To decipher the lies and accept that the Wizard was nothing more than a salesman from Kansas. We are coming through that part so well. Now comes the part where we realize we always had Courage. And Bravery. And Smarts. Now is the part where we face up to it that nothing was as we believed it to be but we are balking at it, Copa.
Why?
Home soon now, Copa.
The sisters are still demanding the Red Slippers, Copa,
when they have their own.
It's a game.
A game we've been groomed to lose. Why is it so impossibly difficult to let go of this kind of thinking.
Our slippers are our own. Just like in that Nancy Sinatra song about the boots that were made for walking. Something tells me Nancy Sinatra's sister did not get very far when she tried to steal Nancy's made for walking boots.
I suspect the Red Slippers are like Cinderella's slipper in this way: The slippers only fit Cinderella.
As if I expect myself to have done something affirmative. Like what? Killed her? An honor killing? Yes, maybe it is that. Maybe she triggers the rage and the body memory of what it was for me as a child. Towards my parents, either my mother or father. And I transferred it to her. And that emotion, the internalized rage and self-contempt never has been discharged.
I like this thinking for myself. That I would be this slithering, cold bloodedly murderous person in my heart. That I hide it so cunningly and so well that though I overwhelm and attack and feel black hatred toward my sister and my mother, no one even suspects me and I don't know it myself. That they are so frightened of me that they accuse me of renting condos and inviting them to beaches (or letting them take their four generation family pictures at my house, instead of my Mother's house ~ or their own house) to hurt and shame them. That I am a dangerous, even a depraved, sister and a worse daughter; that I am a cold and blackened thing.
Or...it could be that this is the thinking that is as ugly as the thinking we were brought up to believe about ourselves, Copa. We have been abused. These blackened imageries are going to have been implanted in our psyches.
This is what we are ferreting out and clearing now, Copa. You and I are not responsible ~ not in any smallest way ~ for the way the sisters are. Or for the way the Mothers are or were.
We were victims.
We need to recognize victim thinking and seriously consider its validity.
It is like you say all the time: "Unfortunately, I was ugly."
:O)
That is a stellar saying. I used it myself, the last time I went out and felt ugly. I just said it: "Unfortunately, I am ugly." And out I went Copa, and it was fine. It was better than fine in this way: I was real. Having nothing whatsoever to do with appearance, but everything in the world to do with illusion: "Unfortunately, I am ugly."
I love that phrase. Love the determination in it.
***
We responded well to our destructive upbringings it seems. Because we are kind people, I suppose. And that I think is a genetic thing. But we bear the twists and scars of our experiences. Clearing this material has so little to do with the actual sisters, Copa. Though it is true that once we are through it, that once we are clear, we will see them without the aura of Mother's life and death power over us. Be aware that the sisters carry the Mother's aura, Copa.
There is not a trick that they missed.
Not one.
Remember my posting about my mother telling me, right to my face, that she enjoyed the jealousy
over her between my sister and I. Do you see the dynamic there, Copa. My mother, doing what she has always done. How sad, that I will never have my sister.
I never will.
I never did, but I didn't know it because I took the hit. Masochism, self sacrifice, feels right to me. Someone accuses me of something as ugly as jealousy and I believe I must be jealous. (Or that I am a manipulator without ever once knowing what that could possibly mean in a setting where, by definition, we are exploring my manipulativeness. Or whether or not you have a boundary acceptable to a fellow employee.)
How do I betray myself like this, Copa? (For all of us, this is the question ~ having nothing to do with our abusive pasts and everything to do with how we see ourselves today.)
Why, if someone says words implying you need a different boundary system than the one you created custom made for you, do you believe the stranger's words at the cost of your own self and what you know?
Why do I do the same thing.
Because that is what the internal echoes are thundering so loudly that we are missing it, that's why.
***
It isn't that every human does not think bad things sometimes. The difference is that some of us will do everything it is in our power to do to hurt, to create discord, to make drama where none exists.
That is the difference.
I love the stories about Dolly, and about M.
I am happy for you, Copa.
You have created a good life, filled with beautiful things. I love "mula". Does it mean stubborn, like a mule?
How strong M must be, in his center.
Cedar
The end result was I went through many times when I didn't care properly for myself. Self sabotage. I took on the role of bullying myself. How strange is that? Reading up on it, it is quite common.
I go back to that place and time when deep feelings cause that old "button" to be pressed.
I become my own tormentor.
Yes. But why do we do this. That is the question. And the answer is important. We cannot be strong women ~ strong enough to make any difference at all for our children ~ with this internal dynamic.
Cedar
-in piece of 
