After Narcissistic Abuse Link

[Scent of Cedar *]

I am not so "shy" anymore, I do go out on a limb at times, but there is always that nagging inner voice......it is time to tame that down.

No. It is time to cherish it, Leafy. Every part of ourselves, to hold her with compassion and to relish her true value. The core of you understands the inner voice wishes to protect you from reality. You no longer require protecting New Leaf, because you are coming aware of who you are and of who you always were.

A living being who questions.

That is what it is to be real.

Nothing more.

Abusers will trick us into believing their certainty. They seem so certain that, compared to our forever questioning of what just happened, we must believe their interpretation of everything ~ including ourselves. (!) When in fact, for any of us to claim we know what the other guy should do or think or how they should see is bullshoot of the purest ray serene.

I read that phrase in a Stephen King novel, you guys.

***

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I think as far as being "sensitive" yes, I think I believed that was something I needed to toughen up, to "fix".

There is a phrase that mattered to me: Damaged, not defective.

Could it be Leafy that they told you what would fasten the wrongness they committed onto you. Could it be that they told you that you were wrong and they were right in a hundred thousand ways...but this was the one that stuck. Out of all the things they probably told you to trick you into believing them instead of your own self, this is the one that left you believing the fault was yours. What was the fault. They were not happy. That they were or were not happy ~ to hold that as our primary value, that the other guy is content enough to stop tormenting us for a minute ~ that is the essence of external locus of control, Leafy.

However it happened that we develop external locus of control, our goal is only for our own self ~ and that goal is internal locus of control. Once we realize that, then suddenly, "they" are immaterial. It isn't that they don't matter. Of course they do. Whoever the "they" is, they are living beings, too.

Of course they matter.

But to ourselves, we matter more. Honoring ourselves matters, most. Learning to hold ourselves compassionately though we have been taught to believe condemning ourselves, essentially disempowering ourselves, makes any sense at all in a world where we are so essentially alone ~ that is our Grail quest.

To honor the self.

The very self that we are, today.

Not through self-aggrandizement, which is only contempt for the real self that we are, but through honor and compassion for ourselves as we confront the incredibleness of the mystery that here we are, alive.

We can look up at the stars and know this is true.

That we are full players, fully entitled players, in a Mystery we don't understand, and that no one else understands, too.

Too.

Just like us, Leafy.

Human.

Fully human.

With our sensitivities and our regrets and our sadness and pain and with our joy, Leafy.

They may have stolen you away from yourself when you were a little girl. But the only way they can continue believing that the lie they taught you was true is if you collude with them.

Believe what you know, Leafy.

What was once believed is only what was once believed.

Which changes nothing and everything, both at once.

Biatch mode....in kinder language, diplomatically self assertive, fiery, motivated by moxy, fiercely independent.

This is true, Leafy. Those are other words to describe when I've done or spoken or thought or believed something I wish I had been so perfect as not to have done. But I am into having a look at the roaring FOO directive beneath perfectionism very much just lately.

So, for me, for this time...I relish claiming biatch. If auto correct would not change it? I would spell out and claim the real word for myself. It is part of my healing, Leafy. I get to be human like everyone.

No more perfect Cedar.

I should change my name to Biatch On Wheels.

Like Captain Dan in Forrest Gump, shaking his fist at the storm.

I don't especially want to be a biatch, but...sh** happens.

:O)

And that's all part of me, too. We are about learning to accept and enfold and encherish, all of our beautiful selves ~ and to see that reflected in our lives.

We are human, we all make mistakes, but not everyone beats themselves up for their mistakes.

I think a piece of what happens when we are overwhelmed by some abusive other is that we learn only to see the end result, when we have been mistaken in an action we have taken or a belief system we have espoused or whatever. that is why we feel horrific guilt instead of learning from our mistakes. That is the only difference really, I think, between those with external locus of control and ~ well, me, for sure. I was shamed ten thousand times. Some of that shame thinking made sense to me and so, it stuck. It happened so many times, and I felt so horrifically bad about it, that I forgot: Nobody knows how to do this. I forgot: Our best is our best. When we learn better, we do better.

And that is the truest thing I know.

We were taught slave mentality: A mistake means I am wrong. Not that I made a mistake, but that I, me personally and forever, am somehow intrinsically wrong. Add: "Just don't think, Cedar." Add: "Don't you dare."

Huh.

So, given the outcome here (external locus of control in your own freaking child you are raising) it looks like, if there was anyone who made a really bad mistake here?

It was my abuser.

And there is no way to forgive her. But I can heal, and live and grow and find myself beyond those times and that reality. And then, my abusers errors or actions can be seen in perspective.

We all are doing the best we know.

Not my business, to know what she was thinking or what she thought she was accomplishing because, once I am healed and as I heal...none of that matters.

I am my own.

Just me, and the stars, and this instant.

Sometimes, my dog and my cat come to see the stars with me.

And my goldfish.

And Dolly, because she is so much in my thoughts, lately. And because she has taught me so much.

But when Dolly looks at the stars with me?

She watches, for Copa.

She is only with me as a courtesy.

Very kind.

We can be our own helpers, too.

We must be our own helpers, first. It's an attitude toward ourselves, Leafy. If someone needs CPR, to debate the value by polling the bystanders would be so sad a thing to do. Yet, in a very real way, that is what we have done, those of us abused as children, to those little boys or girls that we were.

Life is life.

Precious.

And...we are alive.

That is all we have to be.

Alive ~ and wonderfully, miraculously, so.

Copa, I hope you are able to get your laptop.
Your voice is needed here.

Yes.

Copa's voice is us. So is yours, Leafy, and mine, and all of ours. We are creating what is.

Think how amazing, that this could be so.

But here we all are.

Cedar

Copa is the Fire, here.

I don't know what I am doing. I have all those stars and dung beetles and snails finding their reflections in puddles and universes in my eyes all the time.

So, looks like my mom was right, about that one.

What she was wrong about is that I am bad, to be as I am.

Here is a thought, everyone. My mother would have been happy with me if I never had a thought, and just kept cleaning. And taking care of her. Not that we should not take care of our people, whether they have been abusive or not. But first, it is our responsibility to honor and cherish and care for and take care of, ourselves.

Very important, to know this.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

At the same time, I just wanted to fit in, to be accepted.

You were missing yourself, Leafy. You were not accepting yourself. They ~ whoever they are ~ cannot bequeath acceptance, like some magical beneficence or some now you see it, now you don't trick. Only you can cherish yourself. No one can do it for you and no one can take it away once you know how to self-cherish. It has something to do with not requiring perfection and with not believing perfection matters. I am not there yet, so I can only tell you that little bit about that whole perfectionism thing. I know it is in there somewhere at the living heart of things, though. That is where Brene Brown's "Sit with the feelings." comes in. That is there the gladiator comes in, and work, and Copa's Germany. Whether someone else cherishes us or condemns us or whatever it is that they do, to ourselves, we are the only ones who can cherish all of ourselves. Until we do that, no one else can cherish us, either.

Internal, versus external, locus of control.

Ahem.

Choose, and act. Both of these force the individual to actually acknowledge the world around them, and realize that there are other people in it. Violence against anyone suddenly becomes more real once we put faces to the ideas. Either way a person chooses, and however they then choose to act, Camus concludes that “[t]he essential thing is that people should carefully weight the price they must pay” (55).

Yes.

It all becomes so complex we cannot make sense of how to go about changing any of it. So, we have to choose simple. (Which is also what every spiritual tradition tells us, way down in the heart of it.)

Kinder.

That is something we can do, in our face to face days.

But sometimes, I am really mean. That too is where the value of work comes in.

I am not to Germany yet.

But I do begin to glimpse the value of work.

Here is something beautiful:

"The years teach us much the days never knew."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

This too has to do with the intrinsic value of work, and of the value of mistakes.

Most scientific advances occurred through mistakes. Did you know?

Yep.

Even unraveling the structure of the D N A molecule.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Dad would coerce me into smiling, and when a forced little smile broke through my tear stained face and trembling lower lip, I was praised.

I love this imagery of the Father.

"Coerce." So, you were not done being...what emotion, New Leaf?

Do you see it? A kaleidoscope of emotions, none of them wrong or right. Are you able to provide for yourself now the time and attention you required, then? I wonder whether it would be beneficial for you to light a candle in front of a mirror and watch over yourself as you cry or rage, or whatever the emotions are that come up.

When the candle burns down, the session for healing is over, for that day.

We ~ every one of us ~ need witness. To cry in front of someone else requires them to comfort us and creates all kinds of problems and resentments and so on. To cry for ourselves is to bless ourselves with endless compassion; may be, to witness, finally, for ourselves, the depth of our feelings and where they came from and what they mean and how to help ourselves, now.

"...I was praised."

I am missing something essential here, New Leaf. What am I missing? A loving father, comforting a crying child. A child who was not done crying ~ who needed more than her father, who loved her, could give.

Do you know what it was you needed then, New Leaf?

Are you able to provide what you needed then for yourself, today? Somehow, this connects to the husband and the closed door.

Validation is one word, but that is not the word.

But I don't know any more about it than that. Other than to say that our relationships are living, dynamic things. We women set the emotional tone: Initially, in choosing the man (or woman) who will be our mate and then, every day for the duration of the relationship, in where we come to rest emotionally, thus determining the partner's response.

I am the only one who says that though, so I could definitely be all wet on this one.

But...what is it you would need from your mate, now. Why is the door closed. Would it not be possible for you to go there?

You are the woman.

Sexist or not, the world, his world, revolves around you. When it no longer revolves around you? He will be gone.

Just like in that Simon and Garfunkel song about slipping out the back, Jack.

So...why is the door closed? And how do you feel about that closed door and what is the negative tape telling you about yourself that you believe regarding the closed door.

Behind the closed door New Leaf, is a lonely human person.

Too.

A lonely human person, too.

***

I told my D H once how very sorry I was that these terrible things had happened to him, and to us, and to our children. I told him he was a good, decent man, and that I loved and respected and trusted him, and that out of all the people in the world, for us to have lost our family that we had, that for us to have seen our children become so horribly troubled, was something that never, ever should have happened to him, or to me, or to us.

Or to them.

To our children, whose futures were to be such bright trajectories.

To say those true things to my mate, to say those things to the man I loved and had grown up with and made our babies with (and with whom I watched helplessly as we lost our babies, our children, our so promising adolescents) broke through some barrier having to do with what my own husband and I felt about one another and our marriage and our lives together because of what had happened to our children.

That is all I know, about that.

We became two people again, instead of two failed parents.

***

It was mom and dad. I was supposed to be happy, no matter what.
The feeling state that I go to is unbalanced. Usually, when I hit these points, well the book I am reading talks of it as being over stimulated......I hibernate, I become a hermit.
I become this big ball of emotion, I cannot think straight. My judgement is out of whack. I am super sensitive and raw. I am trying to find words for this. You know how it is said that a fearing dog is more dangerous than an aggressive one? Maybe it is that, Cedar, that I am so raw and vulnerable that I.......don't trust my reactions to people. Not that I am some raving maniac. I over think, over feel, over react.
It is during this time it is best for me to be alone.

This is roughly paraphrased from Tolle's The Power of Now.

Who is witnessing these overwhelming emotions, Leafy.

You.

The real McCoy.

The feelings are feeling state/constructs. Someone taught you your emotions were overwhelming, that you were too weak to be who you are. It is like my mother telling me not to think, Leafy.

Like, my capacity to think was defective or something. I believed that for the longest time. I still believe it, I suppose. The difference for me as I have healed is that I don't have to be a perfect thinker anymore.

It's that perfectionism thing.

Like anyone could know how to be perfect themselves, let alone instruct anyone else in how to be perfection.

The whole thing is messed up, Leafy.

So, we are back to: Kinder.

Only that.

***

Over stimulated.... How does the Observer feel, Leafy? Have you heard the saying: Above the ravaged water where its reflection is shattered into a thousands cutting shards of light, the moon shines, unperturbed.

Okay, so I added a few words.

But you get the idea.

You are the moon, Leafy. Not the broken reflection.

That is the difference between how we perceive and what is.

It also is a part of me that breaks through every so often that is based solely on emotion. I can actually feel the switch go off in my brain. If I am able to have this time to myself, it is usually when I am the most creative.

There is some evidence that "genius" has to do with out of control focus.

If you are not able to have that time to yourself...why is that not a value. Why not a notebook kept ready to hand to catch the inspiration.

Some believe that is how God speaks.

That is why we have to maintain a pretty firm hold on our sanity. And on our intent. We may not have a map for where we are going, but we can know we are on the right path by how we proceed toward our intention.

No one can do this for us.

No one can take it from us.

It is ours, it is us, it must be honored for the wonder it is.

A private thing. Here again, if we do what we do for anyone but ourselves, then we are doing something other than what we set out to do. Thus, what we accomplish gets all distorted.

We need to keep a clear intention.

Free.

No one else gets to decide our value.

I keep a notebook and pen close, thoughts come soaring into my head in rhyme

Oh, okay. That's good, then.

Do you work with them, try to learn their essences?

Remember Copa's Camus quote.

I am dreaming of having my own studio one day, and throwing myself into my art.
That is my goal.

The artist I work for did that. Created herself out of nothing. Created herself in spite of everything that told her she could not. She has become very strong. She was ridiculed. Hated, for daring to think herself better than she was taught to believe she was.

So, there is that. You will need to be very strong Leafy, to create yourself of yourself.

But you can do it.

You have to be willing to work alone, and very hard. To the point that your art becomes so much a part of you that what another says about it or you or anything doesn't matter.

So, that would be internal locus of control.

Cedar

 

[New Leaf]

Wow, Cedar, you continue to amaze me. It will take some time to respond, but I will be thinking of all that you wrote. It means a lot to me.

I am at home from work (stomach bug) and ripping apart my house to ready for Hoku to come home.
It is a parallelism to what I am doing here. All of this stuff that I have accumulated, buried and tucked away in closets, like so much stuff from my FOO, I am having to decide what to keep and what to discard.......

I will write this evening.

Funny thing, I cannot for the life of me find my book on sensitive people......maybe I am not supposed to read it yet. I did receive the Artists Way and will get back to daily journaling.........

Thank you Cedar, for taking the time to share your comforting words and marvelous mind.

I miss you Copa, and Feeling, we have not heard from Feeling........
Insane, you too, your thoughts are always so....real.

(((HUGS)))
leafy

 

[New Leaf]

Rufus Wainwright - Across The Universe

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

It is a parallelism to what I am doing here. All of this stuff that I have accumulated, buried and tucked away in closets, like so much stuff from my FOO, I am having to decide what to keep and what to discard.......

There is nothing to discard, Leafy. Nothing about who you are needs discarding or even, changing. It needs loving, and accepting and cherishing and time. All of it is you, unfolding in a warm and compassionate rain.

Ripening, in the Sun.

How does that go. Something about everything seems so rushed and complex that sometimes, we just to sit down.

Or, envision Iz, impossibly huge in that blue water. There is nothing he needed to do about who he was, and that was the magic of him.

That is what he could teach us.

That is where we are trying to get. So, in a way, we are already there.

Perfect, just as we are.

Just...perfect.

***

Just let it happen, okay Leafy? This is really hard, to do what we do here. That is where the concept of work comes in. When we feel overwhelmed, when too much has been keyed and we don't know what to do with it or how to be normal (which we spend so much time trying to be), that is when we do our work with our full attention. We don't need to have the answers, and we don't even need to say any words. When chopping onions, just chop onions. We drink our tea as though the fulcrum of the world spins on the attention we pay to savoring our tea and ourselves being alive where we are to drink it.

Which is all there is, really.

Our attention wants to wander. Our emotions want us to listen to them. But mostly, they are the fearful parts of us. They are trying to keep us safe by keeping us thinking in the old ways. By keeping us thinking in the ways that kept us safe in the unsafe environments of our family dynamic. When these things happen, we can assist ourselves best by taking a deep breath. By slowing time.

Did you know that taking a series of deep breaths lowers the number of brain waves firing per second?

You can do everything you envision, Leafy. You will never give yourself more than you can handle. It will feel like it. That part takes about three days to be through the worst of it. Then BOOM the world is a different thing than you knew it to be. This is about healing, and we are meant to heal, and to be whole. So, all we really need to do is get out of our own way. But it really is not so easy to do that. It is a practice, Leafy.

A practice.

Over time.

The Vietnamese monk who said that in troubled times we should drink our tea as though the Earth's orbit depended on it said this about overwhelming emotion: Asked whether he ever felt anger or rage or roaring frustration, he said yes. The shocked interviewer asked what the Buddhist monk told himself about that. The answer was: This is my practice. I work at my practice. (No quotes because I don't remember the exact quote, but you get the idea.)

Thich Nhat Hahn.

That is the monk's name.

Like he does too, we are committing to our Practice. Nothing more than that.

Steady state.

Beginning with kinder.

Just that one warm little concept of kinder to ourselves.

Not kind, but only kinder.

Cedar

 

[New Leaf]

"Across The Universe"

Words are flowing out like endless rain into a paper cup
They slither wildly as they slip away across the universe
Pools of sorrow, waves of joy are drifting through my opened mind
Possessing and caressing me
Jai Guru Deva OM

Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world

Images of broken light which dance before me like a million eyes
They call me on and on across the universe
Thoughts meander like a restless wind inside a letter box
They tumble blindly as they make their way across the universe
Jai Guru Deva OM

Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world

Sounds of laughter, shades of life are ringing through my open ears
Inciting and inviting me
Limitless undying love which shines around me like a million suns
It calls me on and on, across the universe
Jai Guru Deva OM

Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world
Nothing's gonna change my world

Jai Guru Deva
Jai Guru Deva
Jai Guru Deva
Jai Guru Deva
Jai Guru Deva [fade out]

The Sanskrit phrase is a sentence fragment whose words could have many meanings. Literally it approximates as "glory to the shining remover of darkness"

leafy

Steady State. Breathe. Be.

I have been listening to this song over and over. It is very calming. The first couple of times, I broke down and cried like a baby. Sobbing, and I let myself cry it out. I think it was the imagery of the little girl and the red balloon......

Could it be Leafy that they told you what would fasten the wrongness they committed onto you. Could it be that they told you that you were wrong and they were right in a hundred thousand ways...but this was the one that stuck.

It could be that Cedar, and it also could be that, that is why they were able to get away with the horrible things they did. "She cries at everything...." (true)
"We didn't do anything......" (false) "Just stop crying Leafy, and they will stop." (false) I think Cedar, I tried to change myself in a hundred thousand ways, I was so desperate for it all to stop. Maybe this is why the song is resonating with me as well "Nothing's going to change my world." Meaning, we can achieve this steady state, in spite of anything around us, but also, when I was little, nothing could change my world. I was stuck.

That they were or were not happy ~ to hold that as our primary value, that the other guy is content enough to stop tormenting us for a minute ~ that is the essence of external locus of control, Leafy.

I can see this Cedar. It took me a few times to read it to understand. It is true, their emotions played a huge role in how my day would go. That was a constant drumbeat in my young life, to grow up like that.....then have it all denied. It is amazing I am even here.

Honoring ourselves matters, most. Learning to hold ourselves compassionately though we have been taught to believe condemning ourselves, essentially disempowering ourselves, makes any sense at all in a world where we are so essentially alone ~ that is our Grail quest.

The grail quest. Yes.

That we are full players, fully entitled players, in a Mystery we don't understand, and that no one else understands, too.

Too.

Just like us, Leafy.

Human.

Fully human.

Yes, fully human. Damaged, not defective.

They may have stolen you away from yourself when you were a little girl. But the only way they can continue believing that the lie they taught you was true is if you collude with them.

Believe what you know, Leafy.

Thank you Cedar, I believe it. I am no longer feeling that I am betraying anyone by writing of it. It is true. What else they said about me was false. Who wouldn't cry? Who the h-e-double-L would not cry? Heck yah, I cried, it hurt.

So, for me, for this time...I relish claiming biatch. If auto correct would not change it? I would spell out and claim the real word for myself. It is part of my healing, Leafy. I get to be human like everyone.

No more perfect Cedar.

I should change my name to Biatch On Wheels.

Like Captain Dan in Forrest Gump, shaking his fist at the storm.

I don't especially want to be a biatch, but...sh** happens.

Hah Cedar.
Well okay then Biatch on Wheels, yes sh** happens, if anything at all, we do have a right to be every part of ourselves and defend ourselves.

For me, that came out in my surfing, I had to work hard at the initial fear, then I was a pirate surfer. Meek, shy little old me would not have survived out there, other surfers would have seen that and dumped all over me. Surfing probably saved me. It takes some cajones to look at a wave and be half petrified, half excited and charge it. There is no timidity allowable, one would get crunched with hesitation. Either ride the wave, or it will ride you. Then, there were the other surfers on the inside sections who would try to drop in, dangerously so, I got hurt a couple of times.Unacceptable. This was my place where I could ROAR. No one was going to take that away from me. I created this maneuver to keep that from happening. The El Zoro, cut um off at the pass. Guys called me a biatch, because I was aggressive. Actually, it was because I was out surfing them.
Hey, I may have to get back out there.

Well, I have to correct my phrase about growing cajones as Hoku tells me, "Mom why do people say that? Here is what I saw on FB......."

“Why do people say "grow some balls"? Balls are weak and sensitive. If you wanna be tough, grow a vagina. Those things can take a pounding.”
― Sheng Wang
Ahem......

we have been mistaken in an action we have taken or a belief system we have espoused or whatever. that is why we feel horrific guilt instead of learning from our mistakes. That is the only difference really, I think, between those with external locus of control and ~ well, me, for sure. I was shamed ten thousand times. Some of that shame thinking made sense to me and so, it stuck.

This makes sense, how it sticks......instead of forgiving the mistake, it is freaking analyzed a million times. Harsh.

We were taught slave mentality: A mistake means I am wrong. Not that I made a mistake, but that I, me personally and forever, am somehow intrinsically wrong. Add: "Just don't think, Cedar." Add: "Don't you dare."

Add, "don't cry Leafy, just stop crying..."

I am my own.

Just me, and the stars, and this instant.

Sometimes, my dog and my cat come to see the stars with me.

And my goldfish.

And Dolly, because she is so much in my thoughts, lately. And because she has taught me so much.

I don't know what I am doing. I have all those stars and dung beetles and snails finding their reflections in puddles and universes in my eyes all the time.

So, looks like my mom was right, about that one.

What she was wrong about is that I am bad, to be as I am.

You know Cedar, I love this about you. Sisyphus Dung beetles rolling their booty by the stars of the milky way? (Booty, I must be stuck on that pirate....)
How awesome is that? I would have never known this without your eyes. Thank you for finding those reflections in puddles.......and sharing them with us.

Here is a thought, everyone. My mother would have been happy with me if I never had a thought, and just kept cleaning. And taking care of her. Not that we should not take care of our people, whether they have been abusive or not. But first, it is our responsibility to honor and cherish and care for and take care of, ourselves.

Cinderella. Beautiful and kind and smart.
If we cannot cherish and take care of ourselves, we cannot begin to take care of others.

Yes Cedar, you are so smart. I am glad you didn't listen, and are here to share your knowledge.
If you haven't written books already, you need to.

(((HUGS)))
leafy

 

[New Leaf]

You would not allow them to enslave you Leafy...but like I did too, you enslaved yourself. You fought back...and forgot what you were fighting for.

True. I think too, that even when they were not around, they were in my head. Ewww, my whole life.

That is emotional slavery. It weakens and confuses us, and leaves us vulnerable to the predator because we are not authentically able to trust our own centers or even to know them. Leafy, championing your right to feel the acceptable emotion instead of real rage or real grief or real betrayal, that is where the crime committed against you is. That the the heart, the core, the crux of the issue. Every time you lay claim to the fallacy that there is something different about your ability to process input, the crime committed against you is re-invoked. By you this time, Leafy.

You are right, Cedar, I have taken on the role of my own abuser.

Over sensitive means: My reality matters more than yours.

True. Still does, by my last fight with Sis. Not for me, for her.

There is no such thing as too sensitive.

That would be like saying "Too alive."

Maybe that is what they were saying, New Leaf.

Stop saying it to yourself. You are free of them, now. Now, the job at hand is learning to accept yourself for the wonder of having been created, at all.

Look at those stars, Leafy.

How extraordinary it is, to be alive.

It is extraordinary, every bit of it.

So, what do you feel about the sibs encouraging you to skate on thin ice?

You posted about every aspect of that experience Leafy, but not how you felt.

How do I feel now, or then? I will start with then. I was smart, I didn't listen. I skated away. I am trying to remember how I felt, it was so long ago. You know, all that keeps popping in my mind is I felt defiant, and strong. I liked to push myself with physical movement, even way back then. It was my release. Interesting, how I knew at 5, not to listen to them. I had already been through so many goadings to do this or that. I think because Dad was there, I had a sense of security. I remember skating away fast as I could to the bank where Dad was chatting.
Now? At first I felt surprised at myself, like I had created this memory. It came to me so vividly......so clearly. Then I felt angry... fr!ck3r$ tried to kill me. Then I felt sad, a lot of other memories just came flooding in, stuff I had repressed. It was an ah hah moment. I do not feel angry at them, they were just kids. But I do wonder Cedar, because I was 5, sis, 6, bro, 7. I think kids at this age do have a concept of how to treat others.
How do I feel about the goading to skate on thin ice. Hmm. I feel angry that the dares got to something that outrageous and dangerous. Angry, that at that age, I couldn't tell anyone. I feel proud that I didn't do it, that I had the sense to skate away. Good for you Leafy, good job. I stuck up for myself. Yay me. I just wonder, how the heck did they get to be so mean?

We can live from our own centers Leafy, open and free and without the rattletrap judgment of perfection, which clomps along dragging defeat behind it.

Perfection is a big one on my list. Dad was a perfectionist, Mom, too. I can be with certain things. Perfectionism is an artists bane, crippling.

And then, we get to learn from all those things and go on to create our lives, loving every smallest instant simply because we are here, and we get to risk and choose and celebrate that we woke up this morning.

That will feel good Cedar, to really celebrate. I am getting there.

We are the ones who woke up as ourselves. None of their business. Any more, really, than how they awaken is our business.

But we can say hello, along the way.

Yes we can. Sometimes necessary to remember why we are here in FOO, in the first place. The hello's OMG, that really did happen.......the hellllooooo, no wonder this and that.....
Yes, none of their business.
We do wake up as ourselves and have the God given right and duty to feel comfortable in or own skins. I am feeling it is our moral obligation to do this.
Then we can say from the mountain tops, free at last, free at last thank God almighty we are free at last.

(((HUGS)))
leafy

 

[New Leaf]

You no longer require protecting New Leaf, because you are coming aware of who you are and of who you always were.

A living being who questions.

Yes, thank you Cedar. I don't think I was shy back then, repressed, that's it. Because I am not shy at all.

They seem so certain that, compared to our forever questioning of what just happened, we must believe their interpretation of everything ~ including ourselves.

You know, I see this with my sis encounters. I no longer need her to admit to the things she did, that used to be important to me. Now, I see that would be impossible for her. Upside down. Too painful. It's okay, that's on her. But, and this is a big one, I have to figure out what I will do the next time we are face to face. When I am strong and stand my ground with my opinion, she gets pissed off. That's a crass explanation, but it is true, red in the face sputtering, high falootin "how dare you cross me" pissed off. So, that shows me, I am still not thought of as an equal. Too bad. I am an adult. I am entitled to my own opinion and perspective. She can have hers, that is her right. So the same for me.

When in fact, for any of us to claim we know what the other guy should do or think or how they should see is bullshoot of the purest ray serene.

I read that phrase in a Stephen King novel, you guys.

I like it.

we are the only ones who can cherish all of ourselves. Until we do that, no one else can cherish us, either.

This is so. I think also, that people who have a habit of taking advantage of others, can spot a non-self cherisher across the room. It is written in invisible ink on our foreheads.

It all becomes so complex we cannot make sense of how to go about changing any of it. So, we have to choose simple. (Which is also what every spiritual tradition tells us, way down in the heart of it.)

Kinder.

I like simpler. It is grassroots. Kinder.

Here is something beautiful:

"The years teach us much the days never knew."

Ralph Waldo Emerson

So true.

Most scientific advances occurred through mistakes. Did you know?

Yep.

Also, art. Art is born of mistakes. Who knew an artist could lay down a canvas and schlep paint here in there in wild dashes and brush whips, and call it art. Abstract expressionism.......

I don't particularly care for it, but what a genius.....how prolific. Jackson Pollack, he used house paints......

$140,000,000. Jackson Pollock – No.5, 1948.

Was his first painting a mistake? Who knows, but he was on to something. He believed in what he was doing.

I have this idea to start out small, like your simple, kinder concept.
Keep a journal of small drawings and go from there.
For me.

I am brutally critical of my work. Must stop. If I look at stuff that I disliked at first, then go back to it, I say to myself, "Well Leafy, that is actually pretty cool...."

Retraining, I need.

As always, my appreciation for your response Cedar. Thank you so much for holding my hand and my heart.

So tenderly

(((HUGS)))
leafy

 

[Copabanana]

when i was a little girl i had nowhrere to go and was lonely. I made a best friend when I was 9. my mother worked hers did not. I was always there. colleen could be mean. one time the wood top of the sewing machine case fell. 'colleen convinced me that i had caused the top to fall and had caused the wood to be morred. she would not stop talking about how mad her mother would be and what would happen to me. While i could not see how i could have caused the damage, I was terrified. You see colleen's mother was mean too. and I did not feel really i had anybody.

I had my grandmother who loved me but i felt still as having nobody. I tolerated the meanness.

50 years later I struck up a friendship with her. i had a profession. I was a mother. still, the dynamic of 50 years before was the same. colleen laughingly told me that she had lied about the sewingmachine. she had damaged it and pinned it I on me.

she was the same. i had changed., when i saw that, more to the point, felt I would always be cast in the same role I never called her again. i never said a word. she became desperate. she called my mother. more than once. the more she did so the stronger became I.

there is no bad guy here. I no longer needed or wanted to live that role.

 

[New Leaf]

I love this imagery of the Father.

"Coerce." So, you were not done being...what emotion, New Leaf?

Yes, not done. I felt sad and alone. I needed to cry a million tears.

I think it was hard on my Dad.

Are you able to provide for yourself now the time and attention you required, then? I wonder whether it would be beneficial for you to light a candle in front of a mirror and watch over yourself as you cry or rage, or whatever the emotions are that come up.

When the candle burns down, the session for healing is over, for that day.

I could do this, Cedar, but it would have to be very late at night.

...I was praised."

I am missing something essential here, New Leaf. What am I missing? A loving father, comforting a crying child. A child who was not done crying ~ who needed more than her father, who loved her, could give.

It is the latter. I could never get across what was happening to me. My folks just couldn't see it. My sibs were very good at putting up a united front. So, I would come in and go to my room and cry, I gave up telling, it didn't work. Dad, would talk with me about being stronger and I would swallow my tears, he would tease me into smiling. Then I would be sent outside again, to face my sibs. It was a vicious cycle.

Do you know what it was you needed then, New Leaf?

That is it, I needed my Dad to protect me. Instead, I was cajoled into smiling, then sent out to the slaughter. How confusing.

Are you able to provide what you needed then for yourself, today? Somehow, this connects to the husband and the closed door.

It does connect. Hubs is much like my Dad, stoic, quiet.
I did talk with Hubs, and explained to him that I do have my own opinion and that just because I voice it, does not mean I am opposing him.

We women set the emotional tone: Initially, in choosing the man (or woman) who will be our mate and then, every day for the duration of the relationship, in where we come to rest emotionally, thus determining the partner's response.

Hmmmmm, thinking on this one. Yes, it is so. But, Hubs is very different around emotion. Hard to explain, he is complicated, well aren't most men? He grew up with an extremely abusive father. It is stuffed down in there in a tangled mess.

So...why is the door closed? And how do you feel about that closed door and what is the negative tape telling you about yourself that you believe regarding the closed door.

Behind the closed door New Leaf, is a lonely human person.

Yes, he is lonely. The door is closed because he wants to be left alone with his t.v. He is shutting everything out. I do believe it is a combination of things. His health issues. He is depressed about our grands, the two kids. It bothers him, but he will not express it. He wanted a better life for his kids, then what he lived. His father was an addict.
There isn't a tape playing about myself here. I am concerned for his health. He has said to me that he is forgetting things. Well, heck, so am I, it is called aging. But, he is isolating. Not good. I think he is worried, and frankly so am I, that it could be beginning alzheimer's. I am slowly getting him to talk about it. It will take time. He flares up in spurts and rages. I don't know if it is blood sugar spikes. He is frustrated with his body, he doesn't have the strength he used to, or the energy. It is complicated with all of his health problems. He made an appointment last week with our doctor, to ask him "How much time do you think I have?" It is sad, Cedar. But, he has faced death a few times in the past few years. He feels a decline. This, coupled with the pain of his daughters is too much to bear.

I told him he was a good, decent man, and that I loved and respected and trusted him, and that out of all the people in the world, for us to have lost our family that we had, that for us to have seen our children become so horribly troubled, was something that never, ever should have happened to him, or to me, or to us.

I feel a lot of this is because of what the kids are going through. Because Hubs is so introverted already, it is hard for him to talk about it. So, I try in small steps, kinder. It is frustrating for me at times. Lonely.

I broke through some barrier having to do with what my own husband and I felt about one another and our marriage and our lives together because of what had happened to our children.

I do believe we will get there, Cedar. It will take time and patience. Having Hoku back at home will help, I think.

We became two people again, instead of two failed parents.

It would be nice to have this again with Hubs. I am glad you were able to break through with husband. I will work on this, too, but simpler.

(((HUGS)))
leafy

 

[New Leaf]

she would not stop talking about how mad her mother would be and what would happen to me. While i could not see how i could have caused the damage, I was terrified. You see colleen's mother was mean too. and I did not feel really i had anybody.

Ouch. I am sorry Copa, that was mean of her.
I know how it feels to be a lonely child. I didn't have anyone either.

50 years later I struck up a friendship with her. i had a profession. I was a mother. still, the dynamic of 50 years before was the same. colleen laughingly told me that she had lied about the sewingmachine. she had damaged it and pinned it I on me.

This is much how I feel with my sis, same dynamic.

she was the same. i had changed., when i saw that, more to the point, felt I would always be cast in the same role I never called her again. i never said a word. she became desperate. she called my mother. more than once. the more she did so the stronger became I.

You were very smart to recognize this. She called your mother? That is more than a little bit disconcerting.

there is no bad guy here. I no longer needed or wanted to live that role.

This is what I am trying to figure with my sis. I do not wish to live the role she would have me live, when it comes to us. So, limited contact, and just casual conversation. Time will tell.

How odd, that so many years later, the dynamic remains.

I am glad you stood up for yourself in this.
Yay Copa, so glad you posted.
Did you get your new laptop?

(((HUGS)))
leafy

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

she would not stop talking about how mad her mother would be and what would happen to me.

What a crummy position to be in Copa, even as an adult. And you were only a nine year old little girl. As an adult, we could offer to pay for whatever damage we'd inadvertently caused. And, as adults, it would be assumed that the damage was not intentional. But for the friend to have told you she intended to present you to the mother as a little girl who had broken something and lied about it ~ that friend was blackmailing you, Copa. She seems to have relished tormenting you with the loss of her mother's respect or admiration.

What a nasty little girl.

Do you suppose she was jealous of you, Copa.

I wonder whether the mother knew her own child well enough to understand what was happening.

How awful for you.

Do you think it could have been that she was that afraid of her mother? Or do you think the girl knew exactly what she was doing. Because of her behaviors as an adult, it looks to me like she knew. Why else torment you with what would happen once the lie had been told and your reputation destroyed.

They say we are never safe from people put together like that. That they have no shame about any of their behaviors, and keep popping up in our lives, with horrific consequences for us.

My quote stopped working Copa, but I wholeheartedly agree with your conclusion regarding this person. That there is no bad guy here because you no longer require yourself to play that role.

I will think like that too maybe, once I am further along.

But for today, I say there absolutely is a nefarious villain, and it is her.

I think she will not have changed, not in all of her life.

This is so. I think also, that people who have a habit of taking advantage of others, can spot a non-self cherisher across the room. It is written in invisible ink on our foreheads.

I think it is not so much that they take advantage, Leafy. Predators take actions that make no sense. The win in what they won is not clear. It's like the story I tell about the lady driver.

The other thing that seems to be true about predators is that they prey on everyone they come into contact with. It is automatic to them and has to do with how they see the world and themselves moving through it. They expose themselves through a kind of overweening grandiosity in the way they describe what they do. It isn't that they justify what they do. They celebrate their ascendance in the misfortune they cause others. They seem not to relish or even, to see the pain they create so much as they see themselves ascending. There seems to be a stubborn core of vengeance at the heart of them where everyone else has warmth and real gratitude and an easy, simple kind of joy in the everyday wonders.

Or maybe, it has something to do with that Culture of Scarcity Brene Brown writes about.

That certainly does become what they set up of their lives, with themselves of course, as the gatekeepers.

Every person in their lives will have been hurt or disparaged, their reputations destroyed. The expectation is that the "loved one" can be used and discarded and used again, at will.

As though they have no intrinsic value.

I've read that the predator's world is empty and filled with rage. That they will forever feel slighted, and that this is the source of their outrage and their hatred.

Maybe, they cannot forgive.

Maybe that is the difference.

Just recently we were debating the banality of evil, here on FOO. Our conclusion was that every evil begins with a series of small, everyday decisions that compromise a moral standard. It isn't that we don't know better. One day slips into the next, and suddenly, we have justified thievery or plagiarism or murder. So, I think it is less that there are predators and easily swayed empaths than it is that the predator has allowed him or herself to weave a reality comprised of a series of morally corrupt choices. Rather than see clearly, they seem to come to believe their own reflected reality. It must be like an echo chamber in there. But even so, it seems to me that it is a choice for the predator/grandiosity addict. That it is more a matter of a series of self-deceptions having to do with grandiosity than it is a genetic predisposition.

Well, okay. So maybe it is a genetic thing. Think of the deadlights in the eyes of our addicted children, their brain chemistries desperately altered by drug use.

So it could be that there is a brain chemistry deficit in predators...except they do not show the deadlights. They sparkle and shine and laugh way too loud, forever aware of their own presences and presentations. They so relish grandiosity. That is their drug, and they will stop at nothing to have it.

So says me.

And everything, every interaction, somehow becomes a bargaining point. And at the end of the day, though we know clearly that something sh**tty happened, we never do know what it is that was bought or sold.

And it turns out to have been us.

***

That is very different than believing the predator is constructed any less perfectly than we are, ourselves ~ that somehow, we are empathetic and they are not. It is probably true that we are all more exquisitely attuned to emotional currents than we have been led to believe. What happens though, if we were broken into external locus of control as children, is that, because we grew up with them, we believe the grandiosity-addict is just another version of human. And not something turned evil by his or her own corrupt moral choices. We never see them coming, not because they are so cleverly invisible, but because they feel familiar to us.

How sad, for us and for them, that this is so.

We don't even get it that there is something deeply the matter with the grandiosity addict's rages and falsifications and self indulgences because we lived it, growing up. Instead of turning away, instead of naming the predatory human for the morally deficient, less than human creature they have created of themselves, we find ourselves hooked in; fascinated.

This is how we sell ourselves into slavery as adults.

And in doing this, we also are morally wrong.

Two sides of the same coin.

For those whose locus of control is external ~ for those who, like me, feel responsible for pretty much everything ~ the more inappropriate the predator's behavior, the more sucked in we get. Where a person with internal locus of control becomes bored or even, deeply offended (which is the appropriate response) at the predator's fishing and hooking behaviors, a person with external control will empathize, believing the predator either better than he or she is, or believing for the predator that he or she can be better. If we've been hurt very badly as children, the worse the predator's behaviors, the more hooked in we will be.

It's as though we've been hypnotized. And in a way, we have been. The patterns are such familiar ground for us.

We have a moral responsibility to ourselves to monitor our own behaviors, lest we slip into victim/villain mindset. Or, martyr/savior. If we have been badly hurt as children, we will chose the victim or savior role as adults, justifying that choice through believing we can help the predator/grandiosity addict to heal when in reality, we recognize familiar rhythms in the sadist's song. Fascinated, we rise to dance, the music overwhelming, irresistible.

So, we need to watch out for that.

Perfectionism is an artists bane, crippling.

“Perfectionism is the voice of the oppressor, the enemy of the people. It will keep you cramped and insane your whole life, and it is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft. I think perfectionism is based on the obsessive belief that if you run carefully enough, hitting each stepping-stone just right, you won't have to die. The truth is that you will die anyway and that a lot of people who aren't even looking at their feet are going to do a whole lot better than you, and have a lot more fun while they're doing it.”

― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird: Some Instructions on Writing and Life

I love Anne Lamott.

"...and is the main obstacle between you and a shitty first draft."

:O)

Tai Chi for me today.

Copa, it is so nice to have you back.

Later, dudes.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

i am not back because i still only have the tablet.

first. this woman and her 3 sisters were all molested by the dad. I was fondled by him too when I was a teen. nobody ever told the mom as to spare her.

the mom had a serious stroke in middle age. the woman, my friend found out heer husband had had a 20 plus year affair. essentially she lived her life in role. a very pretty girl and woman she had plastic surgery everywhere. she is a victim as much as anybody.

the point i am making is this: as long as you or anybody look for a guilty party. real change will elude you. in childood what does the most damage is our internal responses, the secondary emotions that we adopt to conceal primary emotions.

that is the real gift of foo. we already know most of what happened and how we feel now. what needs te uncovered is the distortions we made that hurt us still. nobody but us is responsible now.except us.

 

[Copabanana]

i am not back because i still only have the tablet.

first. this woman and her 3 sisters were all molested by the dad. I was fondled by him too when I was a teen. nobody ever told the mom as to spare her.

the mom had a serious stroke in middle age. the woman, my friend found out heer husband had had a 20 plus year affair. essentially she lived her life in role. a very pretty girl and woman she had plastic surgery everywhere. she is a victim as much as anybody.

the point i am making is this: as long as you or anybody look for a guilty party. real change will elude you. in childood what does the most damage is our internal responses, the secondary emotions that we adopt to conceal primary emotions.

that is the real gift of foo. we already know most of what happened and how we feel now. what needs te uncovered is the distortions we made that hurt us still. nobody but us is responsible now.except us.

 

[Copabanana]

duplicate

 

[Copabanana]

CEDAR WHEN DOLLY IS SCANNING THE SKIES, OSHE 9 WATCHING FIR M NOT ME.

 

[Copabanana]

this was the i mother and same family where when i ate a cookie without asking the mother shamed me unmercifully. when i was in college this never stopped shaming me about studying so much, being a f perpetual student.

she was the one, the mother that later said i was like cinderella, and she had said i never had a childhood wth all the responsiibility. she said i went off the deepend in college.

it does not matter to be now who who was mean and who was the victim. all of us were. there is a great deal of suffering in life.. there is always a way to not contribute or to decide how to respond in the circumstances we are in. I do not write about thse people to make myself avictim or to elicit sympathy or to make anybody wrong. I write to say that at some point i found I could walk away.

 

[InsaneCdn]

I write to say that at some point i found I could walk away.

You found a pivot point. I think that is true for all of us, in FOO but also with our kids. At some point... we find a way to PIVOT.