After Narcissistic Abuse Link

[New Leaf]

Leafy, the young girl watching her blood vanish down the drain. That is you. There is nothing wrong in what happened. You were taught to believe there was something wrong in what happened.

No Cedar, there is something wrong with what happened. To lose my virginity to a low life snake who slipped something in my drink to knock me out, so he could have his way with me, was wrong of him. To wake up to him on top of me, and feel nothing, is a testament to what I had learned to feel about myself, at the tender age of 14. I did not choose that. It was rape, Cedar, rape. I felt like a nothing. Nothing. That was wrong, very, very wrong. It disgusts me, and as I review it, now, I can be enraged, for that young girl, who was me, is me, to be so degraded and cheapened and used, by this worm, and then numbly watch my innocence swirl down the drain. It was not my choice. I was drugged and forced upon.
I am horrified at this thought that I had absolutely no sense of myself to be outraged. I didn't tell anyone.
It was a terrible thing to happen, and I didn't care. It was just another straw on the camels back of many I had lived through. That straw did break me, and I went down a path of self destruction for five years.

Because it is what it is. Because we did and do deserve families and loving and someone who has our back like a mother or a sister or a brother has our back. Our worlds are lonely places where Family of Origin should be.

Yes, Cedar we did, and we do. It is different than what is wished for, for sure. My lil sis in-laws have the kind of family you write of, she laments that our FOO is not close. This huge Italian family she married into, get together all of the time and have the dinners and gatherings. They lived close by to one another for their who lives. We moved several times. I ended up staying here in Hawaii, they on the East Coast. Though it is not what I would hope for, it is what it is. It is up to me, to figure out my relationship with my sibs. I am not harboring resentment. Just feeling a bit sad, that my childhood was so harsh. They were children, too.
Yes, my sis can still be overbearing, but I do love her.
It is not denial of what happened. I love my FOO.
They are human.
Human is hard.

Now that I have worked so hard to figure out what probably happened, my job is less about what they did or why than it is about what is the right thing to do going forward. We cannot change what happened to us ~ not any of it. Somehow we come to a place where we honor our own stories, the good and the bad of them. They are all us.

Yes, that is the question, the right thing to do going forward. It is a huge weight lifted, knowing what happened, and that I am not some crazy person making up stories. I will get to that place of honoring the good and bad of my story, after the initial shock wears down. I am no longer teetering tottering between belief or not in the memories. Standing on solid ground and validating them for myself, but I still have the residual affect of trying to find equilibrium.

We can stop judging ourselves and our lives through eyes that are not our own.

They took that from us, too.

Isn't that something.

It is something. I have to wonder how many people are out there struggling with this sort of thing. I have spoken with a few friends who have similar experiences. When we do talk of growing up this way, there is an instant kindred feeling. It is something, just to come this far in life without really looking at it. It is something, to be 56, and finally start to see things through my own eyes. Not that I didn't ever before, see with my own eyes, I did, but there was always that underlying current.

To that little girl with the red balloon, I can say this

One step closer, with each truth revealed and my eyes opened. Love covering over all those times of self doubt and confusion-----worth a thousand years. How brave she (I) was to come out of this. I can hold her close and comfort her, knowing that I (she) did the best we could under difficult circumstances. One step closer, to being truly me, seeing through my own eyes.

Leafy, I am glad you are moving through so well.

Thank you Cedar. I am beginning to feel better, in spite of everything to feel blessed. Like this........

The endless possibilities of what comes next..........

Who was the mother of the other sons?

Rachels older sister Leah. Jacob was promised Rachel, but tricked into marrying Leah. He eventually married Rachel, too.

How did Joseph remember, throughout his slavery, that he was himself?

Joseph had great faith in God. He had many tests and trials regarding his faith. He relied on his faith throughout his ordeal.
It was faith that helped Joseph stay on course with himself. Is faith internal or external locus of control? To have such faith in God, a supreme higher power, that no matter what happened, that faith directed Josephs choice? That he always looked towards his higher power, no matter what the circumstances, and his choices and actions were directed through that faith and what he believed to be right. Joseph had the gift of dreams and visions. He was unshakable.

Thank you Cedar, and all. I am feeling much better today.
Off to new adventures. Life is beautiful.

(((HUGS)))
leafy

 

[Copabanana]

I could never get across what was happening to me.

what happens to us is to some extent a product of our own perceptions...how we interpret the events in which we are a part or those we witness.

that is why we can enter late adulthood believing ourselves to have been responsible for what happened when we were four years old. Or conversely, believing we have no responsibility for that which befalls us when we are over 60.

we can choose to re-think events we experienced at 4, through adult eyes.

you see, I believe that we have control and responsibility to decide we are wrong. that because we perceived something, at 4, does not mean we must believe and live by it at 60. to rethink our lives, is not to accept blame or responsibility for our circumstances at 4 years old. it is only to say that now that i have greater capacity and potential i can choose differently. joseph chose to live as if he had all of the power in his hands at 20, 30, 40 whatever. he chose to not settle scores of a 4 year old. because to have done so, would diminish him.

we have that same potential as did he. and responsibility, too.

I believe you cedar are our pre-iminent model in this. even if you cannot help your sister to evolve and to confront herself, to leave behind her 4 year old self, you keep asking, requiring yourself, to extend yourself and your help to her, and others, here. you do so to be your best self. you require that of yourself, independent of any response or requirement. to me, that is a worthy goal. even though i know in myself that i choose to not yet do the same.

we can persist with adaptive patterns that served us when we were 4, or not. our own choice. to decide if something serves us and others, we need first to become aware. becoming aware is never a wrong thing, to me. even if we decide, especially if we decide something different.

 

[Copabanana]

i was reading about behavioral economics which has part of its foundation in psychology. i was reading excerpts from the book called Priceless which is an exploration of the research on pricing and how consumers in particular make decisions about buying.

one concept is called anchoring. the experiment would be something like this. asked if the average summer climate of san francisco is less than 500 degrees, and then asked to guess the average climate in san francisco, was one group. asked to guess if the average monthly climate of san francisco is less than or greater than 32 degrees, and then asked to guess the average monthly climate of san francisco, is another group.

the two groups anchored by different numbers, first, had significantly different estimates of the san francisco climate.

so, cedar, here I speak to your insistence that my buying was healing. when i was unable to get out of bed even to eat, i was able to buy kayaks and paint brushes and even a giant loom to weave. I was creating a language of a life that spanned greater breadth than any that I had heretofore lived. when I began to buy jewelry, i made sue that my buying encompassed that which with satiate my wanting. not diamonds or rubies but a level that represented to me, enough. I do not know how I arrived at what was enough but it was not quantity, it was satiation.

this makes me think of something with my step father. i was 11 when he married my mother.my sister and i after eating dinner would say, with pleasure, "I'm full." this offended him. we were required to say instead: I am satiated. but never again, I am full.

well apparently this had a lasting effect, or perhaps I was warped to begin with because that original psychoanalyst kept asking me *you will remember cedar, what is it about wanting is so difficult for you?

well, i guess it has something to do with not being allowed to say i am full.

so back to the buying. with kayaks and paintbrushes and looms and dancing shoes (jazz, ballet and of course to tango) i traveled the world of wants to explore. and with jewelry, I set about to define a style. something that would be enough. of course it had to be something that others, a select and unknown audience of jewish matrons in manhattan, would recognize as costly and coveted enough. But of course this same cohort would have in my imagination the means and motivation to buy tremendously more expensive and coveted stuff. so it was not in the main about me. it was what I felt was enough in my own eyes, using these same jewish matrons as my reference point. remember now, before this., 95 percent of my buying had been at thrift stores. so, even though it looked as if I was copying them, what i was really doing was setting a new anchor for myself.

so, with jewelry I find an acceptable standard of enough, in relation to a new reference point. (I had given all of my mother's jewelry (except a valueless ring that was infinitely valuable to me, because i had played with it as a child.) so perhaps, too, I was replacing that which I had given my sister (and maybe competing a little bit too.)

so with scarves, i must have set about on another task. the scarf buying had begun when organizing my house, i realized that the scarf collection which I had assembled from the thrift store was a pile of junk. every silk scarf had a hole from the price staple. what i had valued so hghly (they were silk, after all) was really a pile of used rags with holes. I prized them because i had never before had the means to buy an accessory. except socks or a purse, something with a use.

so with the scarves i set about (unintentially, I thoght) to explore the range of coveted brands. of cachet. in what other category of item could i buy multiple numbers of hermes or gucci or versace. (even on ebay, used).

now when i started my goal was to buy designer quality, for cheap. so I began with a search, made in italy, made in paris, so that i would become conversant with the designers names. and my starting point was dead designers that nobody would remember were expensive. this was a ridiculously strategy until it dawned on me that while I was getting remarkably lovely scarves that highly fashionable women (now dead, too) had coveted and worn, these were still largely "out of style" scarves. but by then I had learned exactly what vintage scarves were highly coveted and valued. I had to pay more but I was buying something that represented to me, something coveted and valuable. I did make a foray into buying a few new and covetyed brands, and I also bough several coveted vintage scarves, just because they were considered by others as signifying value, I realized these were hollow trophies. what seemed to hit the jackpot were highly coveted vintage brands that i loved. and with this I was able to stop. *well, I could stop after i bought winter scarves, too, a thing i never even knew existed.

so with the scarves i dug down. (or up, I cannot decide) I explored value. what am i worth? and by deciding that i was worth hermes and gucci and dior. and then stopping, I realized that on a feeling level, I felt not worth much at all. on the basis of relative value and pricing and the market--which after all was the world of my mother. but as M reminded me, I must have felt intrinsically worth something or I would not have done the buying at all. *which I cannot really yet understand but I am accepting it as true, because I want to.

because after all how many people buy and buy and endlessly buy, because they do not feel intrinsic value in themselves or anything else. but I am heartened that M thinks I am at essence not one of them.

so now that I am out the other side I am agreeing with you cedar that the buying was instrumental and never ever about the stuff. eighty five percent of it will have to be sold. it was a practice (a self-destructive one on a number of levels) of defining myself and anchoring not my value, but something related to it. I will let you know when I learn more.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

what happens to us is to some extent a product of our own perceptions...how we interpret the events in which we are a part or those we witness.

This is true, Copa. But who taught us how to see? What did they teach us to see, and from whose perspective. Why and how did we come to see ourselves through their eyes instead of seeing them through our own. Did this happen because we knew then about them and could not face it? So we took what control we could, for our own safety? Naming ourselves because to name them
would be to lose every smallest vestige of (utterly imaginary) control.

I can't figure out why I think I love them, Copa.

Why would I.

Nietzsche is all wet on "We love because love came first."

I have decided that.

But I don't know why.

we can choose to re-think events we experienced at 4, through adult eyes.

you see, I believe that we have control and responsibility to decide we are wrong. that because we perceived something, at 4, does not mean we must believe and live by it at 60. to rethink our lives, is not to accept blame or responsibility for our circumstances at 4 years old. it is only to say that now that i have greater capacity and potential i can choose differently. joseph chose to live as if he had all of the power in his hands at 20, 30, 40 whatever. he chose to not settle scores of a 4 year old. because to have done so, would diminish him.

"Joseph chose...." That is my question, Copa. How did Joseph...how could he even see that reality. It could be that in believing himself beloved of God, he could respect himself and cherish himself in God's image whatever some human said about him. I am still enslaved in a sense, Copa. I can feel it. That will be the next healing, then.

It always begins with curiosity.

We have learned so much from Joseph. I had no idea there was a drama going on with two sisters and one man.

Yuck.

Misogyny, again.

I feel badly for the older sister, forced into allowing a man she did not want to sleep with her whenever he said; forced to make her babies with a man she didn't want. And I know it was a desert tribe and so on, but yuck.

Maybe, she was happy just to have her life and her child.

But yuck.

No one ever writes about Rachel or Sarah or The Mary.

***

"I believe we have control and responsibility to decide we are wrong."

I agree with you here Copa, but for me ~ and I think maybe this is true for anyone, child or adult, who has been through something traumatic ~ I could not see that what my mother or my sister were doing in present day life was wrong. It was a variation on knowing it was wrong for her to kick our dog but not knowing it was wrong for her to kick me. Wrong things kept happening ~ just as they did during the luncheon you planned for your sister, and as they did somehow go so horribly wrong throughout your mother's illness.

And as they are going so horribly wrong now for me, in this time in my mother's life. And the time will be irreplacably gone.

Ouch.

And we know it, but somehow, we blame ourselves. (As is happening to me now, again. As I come into new balance, still questioning the validity of the old belief system. Still wondering who is the Liar, here. And learning it was me, in having deceived myself so totally that I could believe anything about them but what I knew. So what then of forgiveness or mercy?)

We stop thinking. (Slip into denial.)

Acknowledging the ugliness of reality, we choose kindness as a defiant act. Here is the question: Why victimize ourselves to do that. Maybe, we are trapped still, but in a higher circle of Dante's Hell. We know now that it is our own thinking that created the parameters of our realities. But how to create freedom from that mindset of kindness which is the mindset of the willing victim.

We have posted at length here about the abusive mother who reaches out from the grave to do what harm she can.

And yet, we are taken by surprise.

***

We try harder. (Plan our actions and responses more carefully. Additional care to the sister.) My mother never required additional care. I was exquisitely on her wavelength. I know this is wrong, but I don't think this is wrong. I miss seeing my mother very much. D H reminds me this (the situation that now exists) is not my choice.

And when he does, I feel sadness, and a little sting of shame. How could they not want me. And if we had not done our work here, I would not know anything but that. I am somehow still in love with my Family of Origin. This would have to do with needing their approval in order to love myself.

Well, good, eye-rolling luck with that one.

("What would Cedar do?" Har-de-har-har.)

And I knew then. I knew, when first my mother and then, my sister, told me how funny that phrase was to them, and how they laughed and laughed.

When my mother told me she found it amusing that my sister and myself were jealous over her, each trying to outdo the other. And I wondered very seriously whether I was jealous, and whether that was the problem, had been the problem all along.

I didn't let myself know that I knew then that the shun was well on its way.

But I did know.

Bleak.

***

Somehow, in my secret heart, I wish for them. I think often of the dynamic of the shun. It is a cold fire, but the only one I have.

It is enough, and more than enough, to know that, in essence, I am alone. Therefore, no harm in loving them any way I want to. If they should re-appear in my life, then, as D H says, I will need to be wise and wary.

Why doesn't matter.

They are who they are.

But I need words to know how to see myself in reference to people who never loved me.

Why is it that I cannot just accept that.

What I have learned, how I have learned to survive them is...is alright. the temptation is to accuse myself of weakness, or foolishness (or romanticism, which is my mother's word for describing me, when she is being kind about the way she feels about me). In other words, when she is trying to impress someone she is talking to me about.

Your family labeled you sensitive, Leafy. Mine labeled me foolish in private talk, romantic in public.

None of us is one thing all the time. Life is a symphony. We know that k=now because we have lived a long time. But how sad, to have gone into the world believing their interpretations of us. It probably really is true then that whatever we were taught was wrong with us is our strength, and is an honorable way to be.

What lives in their eyes has nothing to do with me. That is why the story about the lady driver stayed with me. This is who they are. They do it to everyone.

Given my vulnerability of romanticizing them, what would be a winning position for me in that circle.

I don't know.

***

We blinder our vision and lay open what's left of our hearts, believing, because we are in denial, that they love us. From that erroneous knowledge, we extrapolate quick as lightning that whatever is happening now, things will get better momentarily.

This is the flavor of Copa's concept that she taught us about: Dissonance.

We watch open mouthed as the little girls take their second and third spins around the table. Until even they are embarrassed, while the sister keeps cheering them on until the time and the dinner are ruined.

Awkward.

Who would judge a child.

Bad Cedar.

***

My sister recently posted her grand on FB. The grand, now five, screams the names of the Presidents upon command. Or, she screams the Pledge of Allegiance, her face very red, while my sister laughs, behind the camera.

And then, she posted that on FB.

I think she either does not see the child's anger, or does not value the child enough to care.

Bad Cedar, to think such things.

Maybe, I am jealous, as my mother suggests.

I don't know.

***

Add the story of any of the visits with my sister I have described ~ add the high anxiety I experience during any contact with my mother. I am not sure why that happens. Why is it we cannot see and take their games apart without having to judge them by what they are so right in front of us doing.

We are the perfect victims.

Leafy...in your interactions with your sister, it will be best for you not to run away. Not physically, and not in your imaginings, either.

Sometimes, the scenery is not beautiful. In creating the beauty we see around us in the midst of some terrible something we do not understand, we are slipping into denial. If we see that, then we can choose for ourselves whether to go into denial or to see them as they are.

Okay you guys. That is why we do it. So we will not see their nakedness.

Isn't there something in the story of Joseph about the father's nakedness. And the daughter cover the father's nakedness.

But I think the father slept with them, first.

That might not have been Joseph.

***

These are not very nice or decent people, these people who are pleasured by their entrapment of others. Of us, of lady drivers, of their own grands.

What would happen Leafy if you stayed present. No running off to cry. If you intend to cry, sit there and do it. Better still, stay altogether present. Crying means you lose, Leafy. It means we have gone inside. It means we have deserted ourselves, acknowledging and acceding to their reality, deserting ourselves to do so. We are hearing echoes of their lies that we believed were true of ourselves. It is a form of defense. Running away to cry ~ I think this might be a key for you. Not only are you crying (buying into the you are too sensitive buck up Leafy), but you are doubly excluding (doubly damning?) yourself by running into the woods or to your room or somewhere, anywhere, but where they are.

You could cry forever Leafy, about what they did or did not do, but the only thing that will be remembered is that you self-isolated. First with tears and then, by turning away.

In that you believed them over yourself, they win.

Stop crying, Leafy.

Stand up. No anger. No any emotion they can shame you with in front of yourself. You do not require their validation.

You do not require their validation, New Leaf.

Somehow, you need to change that dynamic in your own story to yourself of who you are. I need to do that, too. And I don't know how to do it, either.

But I never cry in front of them, or anyone. That is my F you. And I mean it with all my heart. Like some Energizer bunny, I keep believing we can do this. But if the Energizer bunny saw them as they are, these people she believes she loves, she would gather her belongings (the places where she belongs ~ those are her belongings) into a ball of material that contained everything she needs.

Navigating by the stars because there is nothing else, she falls into something wondrous: That she is; and that is miracle enough. Suddenly, she is free, following stars and listening to symphonies playing out in the spaces between them.

Fully present, she is curious. From this place Leafy when you reach it, you will create. Not in defiance of them, but in celebration of the wonder of your own, beautiful life that is finally yours, as it should have been, all along.

I wonder if we will miss them, once we arrive at that place.

Our response to most every question, in that time, will be: "I don't know."

We will never have to have all the answers, again.

***

Who taught you to do that, Leafy. To cry, turning rage at them, rage at what was happening to you, onto yourself.

Who did that. Ultimately of course, it was you. But who twisted that little girl that you were into believing that funhouse mirror reality?

***

Who taught you to disappear in plain sight, Leafy? What did they gain. What did you lose. How did your habitual actions ~ and these people are clever ~ grease the wheels and tilt the family toward replaying the original dysfunction?

Think of my sister, replaying the dysfunction in my home, or on vacation in my beautiful place where I was (and was paying for), or following my daughter so closely to encourage and then, shun and hurt her? (Just for the record, you guys, my daughter is not me. Once she began to heal from the beating, she addressed the situation in the same venue where it originally occurred, putting my sister in place beautifully, gracefully, and probably, forever.)

And then, she called me crying to confess it. She was so sure I would be angry that she had done what she had done to my sister. How messed up is that, you guys. But I was proud of her. I am very proud of my daughter (and my son) in general. I just wish they would get with the program. And I think, now that I am able to take a minute and think straight at all when they are in trouble (thanks to detachment theory parenting, and to all the parents here) that the kids are breaking through into alright.

Yay.

Or maybe, they are just growing up.

I like them, alot.

***

But I really am beginning to see my sister as all corrupt.

Which seems wrong (Bad Cedar).

Huh.

***

Who does that?!? Right? That is what we ask ourselves. The question we need to ask is how it is we are blind to it. That is why I did not like to hear that you cry because you are too sensitive, Leafy ~ more sensitive than anyone. Because there was no joy in the claim of it for you. It wasn't "I am so delightfully sensitive to the nuances of wind and light and fire." It was: I am too sensitivity. Because there was no satisfaction, but there was a kind of denial ~ deep and savage ~ in the defiant way you claimed sensitivity as your sole truth, as the only thing about you that mattered.

You matter.

Sensitivity is a part of what is human. It is not the whole ball of wax. It is not something that should find you crying alone in a darkened room. It is not something by which you identify yourself as weaker or wrong and them as stronger, and therefore, correct in their interpretation of your reality.

For you.

Spit them out, Leafy.

Either they were innocently wrong or they intentionally lied. Why does not matter. Reclaiming yourself with no shame for anything about you or for anything that has happened to you. That is what this time is about, for all of us, here on FOO Chronicles.

My daughter says: "This is my path, Mom. Don't worry. I don't understand it, but I am living it and I would not change any of it."

So I drag myself along behind her (or when it was my son in danger, behind him), forever croaking out some version of "Don't do that."

But they seem fine with what they've done.

So, how do you like that.

***

That is how I would like you to see the incident with the man and the years that followed, New Leaf.

And I know that is somehow very healthy, but I am not there, yet.

Did you know I read a book once in which the virgins took their own virginities using stone phalluses.

I always did like that story, and that idea.

Men have forever taken control of those things that are exclusively the province of women.

It's in how you see it, Leafy.

Stop seeing in that old way.

***

Back to sensitivity.

Then, you were beating yourself up for it, using it to hurt yourself further because you had not become a famous artist or a writer or a musician. When in fact, you have done all those things. Just not with an intense enough focus to have received outside world approbation. Independent judgment of your talent would justify your sensitivity to FOO.

See the circle, New Leaf?

No way you could win.

You are more than your sensitivity.

You were beating yourself up because you had not disciplined your sensitivity enough to save yourself ~ to justify your existence (!) here in your wonderful life that is yours that you are living.

***
In their eyes.

***
How extraordinary, and how awful, Leafy.

For you, and for me and Copa too, because of course I saw the value of my life too, through their eyes and not my own.

I was so fixated on that Family Dinner.

I don't know whether I really love anyone, but it feels like I do. I know I regret the time lost, the years I have not seen them, the stupidity of what feels like why they do what they do and what they won. And I just don't get the value of the win, but it seems like something hurtful to me.

I see that I have no power to change it, unless I change myself into someone I literally cannot be. Like them. And even that would not do it. But even if it were, I can't do it. Not at the level of holding a lady driver in contempt or etc. Probably for me too there is a level.

So, there's that.

The thing with our Families of Origin is that it is a slippery moral slope. One day, you say nothing about the exclusion of a sib. The next, you are standing in the driveway rolling your eyes at the shamed elderly lady driver right along with the rest of them. And telling her that, though she has spent that first night after the long drive in your house in past years, this year, there is no room.

And no dinner.

And somehow, my FOO found that lady's predicament funny and worth many eye rolls back and forth behind her back.

Okay. So, this is like the kicking the dog dichotomy, if that's the word I want. I know what they did was wrong. I know I feel so badly for the lady driver.

But I don't hate them for the pointless evil of what they do.

I only know, like I did about our dog, that what was done was wrong.

Somewhere in here is why I label myself coward.

A moral slippage on my part, not to have hurt her back.

Maybe, we are slipping into matricide territory, again.

***

I don't know why they do these kinds of things. I only know I used to do them, too. Of course I must have. I would have expected such treatment myself, and wouldn't have known any better than to dish it out to others.

But now, I cannot. I am sure I do a million other wrong things, but not that one.

Copa's Sleeping Beauty Kiss, and falling in love with my children and through them, with myself, changed everything for me.

How fortunate are we, in that.

***

I dreamed last night that I was trying to get here to erase the things I have posted about my sister. I was trying to drive in the old sedan that came out of the sand beneath the ocean. Interestingly enough, the things I have posted about my mother were just what they are. My mother knows too what she did.

But I felt badly about having posted as I have about my sister.

This has to do with protecting her. That was my ~ I don't know. I just always protected my sister, always gave her time, always was open to her.

So, I see that I am afraid of my sister.

Nothing else could explain these feelings, given what I now know about what she has done and who she is.

I know that part of it is that if I were to say to my sister the things I have learned here...for sure, she would start to scream-cry.

She must have done so too as a child.

My mother or father would have responded first to the scream-crying child.

This is a true dynamic. I feel it in my bones.

Shocked surprise at the scream-crying sister.

My sister does this as an adult, too.

She did it when I insisted that she not exclude my brother. She did it on her last phone call to me when she expected that, after a certain number of shunned months, I would have returned to kind self.

But I hadn't, because we have worked very hard here, and I am no longer kind.

Not to her, and not to anyone like her.

***

And then, to silent cry, where I am supposed to listen for a long time to someone struggling to hold back her tears because she is so hurt and shocked ~ let's not forget shocked ~ at my accusation or demand. (Like, if our mother will not contact our brother monthly while she is staying with you to let him know she is alright, then you need to.)

Sort of like, two wrongs do not make something right. Do your part to set this right. Mom doesn't even have to know.

It was that directive, and the fact that I would not bend on it, that sent my sister blasting into the stratosphere (of course). That is when my sister told me she walks with the Lord and etc. Which I have posted about before.

She scream-cries when there is a witness. If we are alone, she watches me watch her eyes fill with tears.

How could she possibly treat me so coldly and love me.

Ouch, for Cedar.

(What would Cedar do? Har-de-har-har-har.)

***

So, what is happening to me with this dreaming I am doing lately is that my internals are trying to go back to the old, comfortable ways of seeing. I am like everyone. I would like to be loved. It would mean so much to me, to be loved. But I am not. Not by them; not by them at all in any smallest sense of the generosity and joy that is what loving is, all parties growing.

Huh.

It is the same thing I think Leafy as what you do when you post beautiful pictures of lighthouses.

Lighthouses.

Guidance to the place we are determined to go.

Good for you, Leafy.

I am not criticizing the lighthouse pictures. I am noting your process as I see it.

Comparing it to my own.

So, that would be why I love that imagery of the stars, and of the dung beetle, especially.

Everything that matters to her, she protects and carries with her, navigating by the stars, the ball of dung turning to compost over time and once her babies are hatched, all of them busily making more compost and enriching the Earth.

Alone.

She is alone, without her sister and mother, like me.

But she is fine, navigating by the stars.

I cannot imagine how I could have believed these terrible things about my own people but then ~ my people are bad people. Very mean. Cruel. Their choices of victim exquisitely thought out. No mercy.

No mercy.

That is the difference then, between them and me.

Mercy.

The quality of Mercy is not strain'd
It falleth as the gentle rain from Heav'n
Upon the place beneath.

It is twice blest;
It blesseth him that gives and him
that takes.

"Tis Mightiest in the Mighty.

So, that's Shakespeare, of course. One of my favorite things. I find surcease, there. In the green, and in the rain....

Like you do Leafy, with the imagery of the Lighthouse.

Or, like Copa does in the passionate reclamation of self that is Tango.

Or like I did, with the pain that echoes the music that becomes the exquisitely precise language of bone and muscle and will that is ballet.

***

In a disjointed fashion, I could write here about what did happen, with my mother or my sister, or with both of them together. But it is like there are blank spots in the story. Places where nothing makes sense.

They just hang there, these incidents, like trauma.

So, I must have been traumatized.

Huh.

As an adult.

(!)

I wonder why we believe we are so tough, just because we are no longer growing.

My heart is more tender and open now than ever in my life ~ other than with my babies.

It was all so blatantly nasty.

Copa, could it be that this is what happened to you? That in being away from them, your heart was opened. In your openness, you became vulnerable to them in a way impossible for you as a child. That plays into this for us, Copa. Having fallen in love with our children left us vulnerable to our families in ways we had never allowed ourselves to be vulnerable as children.

That is in here, I just know it.

Connected, for me, to vengeance.

Therefore, to its opposite: forgiveness.

And that is how they got in.

***

It is best to remember. It seems I have a tendency to want this ugliness not to be my story. So, I just take the ugliness out. I turn it into something else.

That is where they feed.

I will find other people to love...but I cannot, of course, because I do not trust.

So, I will just be an observer, then.

***

But I don't know how to think of them, or how to see myself free of regret.

How is it that they could know me, and never once have loved me.

That is what we are all still doing here, I suppose. Learning how they see, and learning how they see us.

Still it doesn't feel very nice.

So...the dung beetle navigating by the stars. (You guys. We must have finally have learned to cherish the whore washing her feet in the sun. With that cheap flashing neon sign, "Girls! Girls! Girls!" I love her for her courage. Love the Sun, there in that imagery. Hot. Burning. Explosive ~ and she maintains her composure, caring for and cherishing herself.)

I love that imagery so much, too.

So, now we are a dung beetle, everything that matters to us our own and well fed and well protected, and we are navigating by the stars. But...where are we going? There is nothing we need. We carry it with us. There is nowhere to go or not to go. We are following the stars. But really, we are already where we are.

Those stars, those lighthouses...Copa. What is your imagery. It would be in the fire and flare and passion of Tango. Just that color of more red than orange, the skirt flaring and flaming around you. I always did see you that way Copa, do you remember? The Latina on the motorcycle, on the Harley Davidson, in the Sun.

No helmet.

No fear.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

because after all how many people buy and buy and endlessly buy, because they do not feel intrinsic value in themselves or anything else. but I am heartened that M thinks I am at essence not one of them.

so now that I am out the other side I am agreeing with you cedar that the buying was instrumental and never ever about the stuff. eighty five percent of it will have to be sold. it was a practice (a self-destructive one on a number of levels) of defining myself and anchoring not my value, but something related to it. I will let you know when I learn more.

I love this, and agree with it. I am doing something similar in working where I work. I dress in bright colors, there. I wear my hair flagrantly, there. Instead of hiding it in an appropriate braid or regretting its nature or color.

I frequently tell myself: "Unfortunately, I am ugly, today." Then, I go on to have whatever my day is without any emphasis on trying to be attractive enough to matter.

A gift to me, Copa.

It must have been that my mother does cherish my appearance.

That whore feeling has to do with that. Me, but not myself.

You are doing with your buying what I am doing with my appearance, Copa. In my private life, I still wear black or white. In my private life, I do not wear my hair flagrantly.

But in my work life?

I am wearing dangling earrings just lately. In the daytime.

I have become a rebel, Copa.

Too.

Like you.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

It was a terrible thing to happen, and I didn't care. It was just another straw on the camels back of many I had lived through. That straw did break me, and I went down a path of self destruction for five years.

This is a version of what you lived with your family, Leafy.

It wasn't that the straw broke you. It is that you had been brought up to break yourself. You had been brought up to take whatever the punishment was, whatever the betrayal was, and blame yourself. (And not care. that is the translation of blaming yourself, New Leaf. You know this already. We cannot see ourselves. That is why FOO Chronicles works. We can see, for one another.) Anyway, to that degree (and it looks to me to have been total), you froze. There is a gulf now between you and the who that was you in that time. Every time something like this happened, whether it was a physical betrayal or, worse, an emotional one, another gulf formed; another part of you was frozen.

But just look at you now, New Leaf, coming back.

Is there a way you could volunteer at a rape crisis center, Leafy?

You would be so good for those young girls, and those women, and I think it would help you to heal, to learn to stop judging yourself as you do. Or a Women's Shelter.

It happened, Leafy.

Hold that young girl, that young woman that was you, with compassion. Not disgust, New Leaf.

Compassion.

She is human.

She is alone with it.

She merits and deserves your protection. Your true protection. You are right. It is hard to be human. I see you leveling contempt at the male.

He does not matter. Who cares whether he is a contemptible imitation of what a good man is. Other men, decent men, will have recognized and taken care of him, by this time. They will have, Leafy. Real men, good men are very strong, and very moral.

Think about Lil's Jabber.

You matter. Not Mr. I have to drug innocent girls so they will stay still long enough for me too get anywhere near them.

Yuck, Leafy.

Nonetheless, your job is to hold yourself with compassion. And you are not doing that, or your emphasis would not be on that worm of a manlessness who has surely been beat into submission by real men by this time.

And you are leaving yourself alone in your heart because somehow, you have learned to hold yourself in contempt over what happened. Many things, terrible terrible things Leafy, happen to every one of us. Those who come back, those who make a difference to the screaming evil in the world, have saved themselves, first.

Oxygen mask rules: Apply yours first, or everybody dies.

Compassion for you, Leafy. For the girl that you were when you learned what they taught you about your value. For the beautiful, blossoming young woman, strong and straight, who survived the predator, Leafy.

That is the only thing that matters about what happened.

You lived.

Part of what you are not seeing ~ and you need to see it, Leafy ~ is that someone who would enjoy a drugged young woman is a thief. Thieves escalate.

You were lucky to have escaped with your life.

That is (maybe) why the imagery of the blood is traumatic enough to be what you remember. For me, it connects to the pond, and the skating on thin ice and your anger over that.

You will know whether that connection works for you or not.

I think you aren't allowing yourself to remember the rest.

But New Leaf: It doesn't matter. That man doesn't matter.

YOU LIVED

Now, you get to decide what you are going to do with your own, beautiful life.

Like, breathe. Or, drink your tea.

No one can bring us back Leafy but ourselves. We can talk about it here, but we cannot say words magic enough to make healing happen.

But you can.

You already know them.

It is just that someone taught you (Just don't think, Cedar. Don't you dare.) never, ever to say those words that will heal you.

Say them.

Shout them.

Whisper them first, and count it a champion's run. Because once you hear yourself whisper the words that will heal you?

Then you will know what they are.

After that?

It's just a matter of time.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

not self-deception, for him. reality based upon seeing himself and others as human. not more or less. deserving everything not because they were more than, but because they were true and real.

I think the answer, in Joseph's case, is in the God he believed believed in him.

I know who I am. I am a Child of the Most High God. I am equipped, empowered, talented, strong, fearfully and wonderfully made.

Joel Osteen

So, here is a valuable exercise.

Twelve times, write: I, your full name, am the beloved daughter (or son) of the Most High God.

Twelve times, write: She (or, He), your full name, is the beloved daughter (or son) of the Most High God.

Twelve times, write: You, your full name, are the beloved daughter (or, son) of the Most High God.

***

Recovering internal locus of control has also to do also with a sense of purpose. I am remembering here Maya Angelou describing how she became herself, changing the world. Remembering that Maya grew up subject to every ism and abuse...how did she learn to be herself.

That is my fascination with Maya Angelou.

Where did that confidence that she was not as her environment decreed her to be ~ where did that come from. So, Maya Angelou told a story about being shamed in public by a pastor who, once she'd begun making a little name for herself and had some humility to lose, required her to say aloud, again and again before an audience, that God loved her. Maya describes feeling foolish. And then, being (Not feeling. Being.) angry and ashamed and defiant and horrified.

And then, she broke through.

And she never questioned her identity or her purpose, again. She just didn't know what it was. But she knew that God did know.

So, she just did the next right thing. If the story was debilitating, she changed it. If it became arrogantly untrue (which in much of her writing, especially where her mother was concerned, it did) then you can trace it becoming more true about everything having to do with Maya, herself. Maya's stories about her mother are stories of the mother Maya needed her mother to be. And therefore, they are stories of the mother Maya then went on to create of herself.

An important distinction, and something for us to think about, because we will see our own paths there.

I already do choose mother figures from people I admire. (Maya, the black lady from Matrix, Lisa, Dr Ben Carson.) Soon, in my writing, I will create many personas for my mother, maybe. She will be every villain, and every great and human person, too. I will be able to do that once I truly lose the fear that my mother was right, or that she had any right at all to do what she did.

To honor a memory by writing nobly untrue things as Maya Angelou did must surely be the most damning form of condemnation.

Or maybe I am just practicing taking a kind of vengeance.

Or maybe, I am just showing off to you guys.

***

Brene Brown writes about a Culture of Scarcity.

“Vulnerability is not weakness, and the uncertainty, risk, and emotional exposure we face every day are not optional. Our only choice is a question of engagement. Our willingness to own and engage with our vulnerability determines the depth of our courage and the clarity of our purpose; the level to which we protect ourselves from being vulnerable is a measure of our fear and disconnection.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Here is my new favorite quote:

“Don't try to win over the haters; you are not a jackass whisperer.”
― Brené Brown, Daring Greatly: How the Courage to Be Vulnerable Transforms the Way We Live, Love, Parent, and Lead

Here is a link for us:

https://www.goodreads.com/work/quot...ourage-to-be-vulnerable-transforms-the-way-we

I think Culture of Scarcity thinking figures in to the evolution of external locus of control. If we can step back and gain a little perspective on the ways our families of origin work even now, we can imagine what it must have been like for us as little kids. So now, when my mother has no power but whatever money she and my father had put aside (which the kids, having created their own lives long since, no longer require for survival) then we can see:

The energy and dynamic of the shun.

The determination to claim the power of telling the family story into the future.

Preferential treatment or exclusion of adult siblings with the same game rules applying to grands. Though for my mother at least, other than in the case of my sister, each of the grands have another set of grandparents.

So that should tell us something but I don't know what.

I am losing focus on my family of origin. I read something today about choosing our battles, and not devoting energies where we cannot effect outcome.

***

But I do have this to say, Copa. Regarding Joseph seeing human in each face. We were taught, I certainly was taught, eye rolling and contempt and backstabbing our own husbands and being held in contempt by a mother who kicks her own children which we then try to understand as the poor mother's uncontrollable rage. And how bad she must have felt and how hard she must have tried and etc.

But my mother did not feel bad about those things, Copa.

Or she would not have pretended she was drawing back her arm to hit me when I was in my late fifties and she was nearly eighty. And the sneer on her face said: "Any time."

So, that is the genesis of an external locus of control the wicked old thing was trying to celebrate well into her old age.

Isn't that something.

Serenity posted an article for us, back when she used to read here, about elderly parents abusing their elderly children.

So broken.

Maybe the difference is that Joseph's parent did not wish him ill.

Ours did, and do.

Like always, why doesn't matter.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

This is true, Copa. But who taught us how to see? What did they teach us to see, and from whose perspective. Why and how did we come to see ourselves through their eyes instead of seeing them through our own. Did this happen because we knew then about them and could not face it? So we took what control we could

Well, I am at the library. I was able to read your first post Cedar, and part of the second, only. I have a great deal to say but the tablet completely broke and will not even turn on. Saturday I bought a laptop online and I am praying it comes soon.

You see, I think it will be different for each of us. What we did to keep a self. I mean it was Sophie's Choice. We had to choose between children so that one would live. One died. We are at work with a resurrection here. Nothing less than that.

There had to be buy in Cedar. But I do not think we knew we were so compromised. Because remember, this was the only world we knew. There was nothing else, no comparison to be made in those early years. That is why you are so perfectly attuned to your mother because you could only exist where she permitted it. Did you see the post last week with the Venn circles? I could not describe them because I had no working keyboard. You can google venn diagram and see what comes up. It is easier to look at it pictorially, rather than I describe it in words, The mother models a self to the child, by showing her what she permits and approves of, and what is forbidden. She shapes behavior and models a persona. The child constructs her personality in relation to the mother. Eventually, there is dissent. The child says no. Then negotiations begin.

I believe our mothers shared the singular characteristic of being absolutely fierce, rejecting and unforgiving negotiators. Like living with Donald Trump. I believe that at first there was absolutely no room what so ever for dissent on our part. But enter our imaginations. Dreaminess. Fantasy. Romanticism. Creativity. Inventiveness. I think that is the sphere where we became our own true selves. But even that was permeated with shame and fear. I think what we killed off was display, pride, overt will, a sense of security, the willingness to risk in public, etc. What was killed off was the public display of power and purpose. The overt Donald Trump. Because our mothers demanded we be subordinated. We developed secret lives like any enslaved people do. And from that came Jazz. But unfortunately it was secret. Because anything let loose would threaten the mother.

I have to go now because I have to do one more thing on the computer and the time is running out. I do not have the ability even to read along anymore until the new computer shows up.

Be well. Thank you.

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

You see, I think it will be different for each of us. What we did to keep a self. I mean it was Sophie's Choice. We had to choose between children so that one would live. One died. We are at work with a resurrection here. Nothing less than that.

I love this imagery, Copa.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

I will miss you. I already do in fact. I only realize just how much I rely on FOO/you when I lose the connection.

COPA

 

[New Leaf]

I believe you cedar are our pre-iminent model in this. even if you cannot help your sister to evolve and to confront herself, to leave behind her 4 year old self, you keep asking, requiring yourself, to extend yourself and your help to her, and others, here. you do so to be your best self. you require that of yourself, independent of any response or requirement. to me, that is a worthy goal.

I concur and am truly grateful.

we can persist with adaptive patterns that served us when we were 4, or not. our own choice. to decide if something serves us and others, we need first to become aware. becoming aware is never a wrong thing, to me. even if we decide, especially if we decide something different.

Yes. Being aware is key.
"Awareness is like the sun. When it shines on things they are transformed."
Thich Nhat Hanh

so now that I am out the other side I am agreeing with you cedar that the buying was instrumental and never ever about the stuff.

A part of the journey....I agree.

Hurry back, Copa, you will be missed.

(((HUGS)))
leafy

 

[New Leaf]

It is enough, and more than enough, to know that, in essence, I am alone. Therefore, no harm in loving them any way I want to. If they should re-appear in my life, then, as D H says, I will need to be wise and wary.

Why doesn't matter.

They are who they are.

But I need words to know how to see myself in reference to people who never loved me.

You see yourself with your own eyes, Cedar, not by measure of how anyone else may feel about you, or see you. You are God's child, precious in every way. Born with the promise of endless possibilities. In spite of great difficulty, you emerged from the fire, a beautiful and shining diamond.
No one, no one else has the right to label you anything, you define yourself.

Your family labeled you sensitive, Leafy. Mine labeled me foolish in private talk, romantic in public.

But the eyes in your head........see the world spinning round, Cedar. Remember that old Beatles song.....
They are the fools, Cedar, to not know what a treasure you are to the world. My "sensitive" label, yes, that is not the only part of me, as if I was one thing, just as you are much more than "thinking too much" how absurd.

But how sad, to have gone into the world believing their interpretations of us. It probably really is true then that whatever we were taught was wrong with us is our strength, and is an honorable way to be.

Yes, it is sad, Cedar, but in our heart of hearts, we didn't believe, that is why we are here. If we believed, we would have been different people than what we are. I think we were and are very brave. We are climbing the mountain, seeing the world, spinning round.I think that our strength was and is a fearsome thing to them.

My sister recently posted her grand on FB. The grand, now five, screams the names of the Presidents upon command. Or, she screams the Pledge of Allegiance, her face very red, while my sister laughs, behind the camera.

And then, she posted that on FB.

I think she either does not see the child's anger, or does not value the child enough to care.

How odd, and sad for the child. You see, Cedar, you have eyes to see reflections in the puddles. This is what they feared all along, so they labeled you a fool. You dared step out of the box of conventionalism and family dynamics. With your child eyes. You have a gift. Instead of embracing and nurturing your gift, they felt that it condemned them, so they condemned your gift.

Add the story of any of the visits with my sister I have described ~ add the high anxiety I experience during any contact with my mother. I am not sure why that happens. Why is it we cannot see and take their games apart without having to judge them by what they are so right in front of us doing.

We are the perfect victims.

I believe the high anxiety is our inner child reacting. It hits us to the core and puts us on guard, it is a voice that says, be careful you are not safe here. Flight or fight. We can see...... too much. That is the problem, we know. The confusing part about their games is that they are our people. To be hurt in such ways by ones own family, from childhood on, then to come to an age of understanding, opening up our own eyes. Eyes wide open. Wide open to everything. Questioning.

Leafy...in your interactions with your sister, it will be best for you not to run away. Not physically, and not in your imaginings, either.

I am thinking on this, to be myself truly raises sisters hackles. How odd to write that.
So, what then, to " keep the peace" I learned to water myself down or produce some lesser version of myself to suit her? You are right Cedar, I will be myself.
Aware of her reactions, but myself. Anything less is unacceptable.
" To be yourself in a world that is constantly trying to make you something else is the greatest accomplishment " Ralph Waldo Emerson

What would happen Leafy if you stayed present. No running off to cry. If you intend to cry, sit there and do it. Better still, stay altogether present. Crying means you lose, Leafy. It means we have gone inside. It means we have deserted ourselves, acknowledging and acceding to their reality, deserting ourselves to do so. We are hearing echoes of their lies that we believed were true of ourselves. It is a form of defense. Running away to cry ~ I think this might be a key for you. Not only are you crying (buying into the you are too sensitive buck up Leafy), but you are doubly excluding (doubly damning?) yourself by running into the woods or to your room or somewhere, anywhere, but where they are.

Flight or fight. That is what that is about. I think.
I do not like conflict. But, it is a part of life.
I have learned to not fight with hubs.
It doesn't get me anywhere.
He will get extremely angry and explosive, and if I stand my ground and argue with him, it just gets worse and worse. So I walk away and give it a day or so. Of course this upsets me. But, I find that
by waiting until he is calmer, things just work out better.
It is the same with sis, she is unyielding. Stubborn. A bull.
I get frustrated, I cry. Crying is so built in. The feelings just well up. I feel sorrow before I feel angry....

You could cry forever Leafy, about what they did or did not do, but the only thing that will be remembered is that you self-isolated. First with tears and then, by turning away.

In that you believed them over yourself, they win.

Stop crying, Leafy.

Stand up. No anger. No any emotion they can shame you with in front of yourself. You do not require their validation.

You do not require their validation, New Leaf

I do not require their validation. I did before, but not now.
I see walking away as a strength. It does not make sense to me to try to make a point, then be berated over it. I walk away from sis and hubs because I won't be drawn into circular talk.

Somehow, you need to change that dynamic in your own story to yourself of who you are. I need to do that, too. And I don't know how to do it, either.

Yup I don't know Cedar. For me it is because I am super sensitive, it is true. It is not a bad thing to be.

But I never cry in front of them, or anyone. That is my F you.

Most times I am able to hold back the tears, but when they do come the floodgates open.
I am able to have a tougher skin too.
For some reason with my sister, if I feel hurt or angry, frustrated, the tears flow.

Navigating by the stars because there is nothing else, she falls into something wondrous: That she is; and that is miracle enough. Suddenly, she is free, following stars and listening to symphonies playing out in the spaces between them.

I love this Cedar.

Fully present, she is curious. From this place Leafy when you reach it, you will create. Not in defiance of them, but in celebration of the wonder of your own, beautiful life that is finally yours, as it should have been, all along.

I wonder if we will miss them, once we arrive at that place.

Our response to most every question, in that time, will be: "I don't know."

We will never have to have all the answers, again.

I think so too, Cedar.There is mystery in life. There are unanswerable questions. I think the most important thing is, where do we go from here? How do we find our purpose and meaning, now that we can see ourselves and the beautiful world through our own eyes?

Who taught you to do that, Leafy. To cry, turning rage at them, rage at what was happening to you, onto yourself.

Who did that. Ultimately of course, it was you. But who twisted that little girl that you were into believing that funhouse mirror reality?

It is clear to me that it was my sister. She needed all of the attention. It is as simple as that.

Who taught you to disappear in plain sight, Leafy? What did they gain. What did you lose. How did your habitual actions ~ and these people are clever ~ grease the wheels and tilt the family toward replaying the original dysfunction?

Sis had to have everything her way. Always. I slowly realized it was much easier to fade away into the background.
It was confusing. It still confounds me now, how she was able to do what she did from such a young age.

I am very proud of my daughter (and my son) in general. I just wish they would get with the program. And I think, now that I am able to take a minute and think straight at all when they are in trouble (thanks to detachment theory parenting, and to all the parents here) that the kids are breaking through into alright.

YAY. That is wonderful Cedar.

Yay.

Or maybe, they are just growing up.

I like them, a lot

My daughter says: "This is my path, Mom. Don't worry. I don't understand it, but I am living it and I would not change any of it."

I like my kids too, love them. Don't like what is happening with my d cs, but when we did get along....... they are funny, smart and easy going. I am hoping for them, that they will figure out a way through towards their purpose.
It is this nasty active addictive persona with my two, that woke up the FOO memories.

But I really am beginning to see my sister as all corrupt.

My sis, I don't know Cedar, she is herself. But as I wrote, she has likable qualities. It comes with a price, and that is that everything still has to be her way. I cannot judge her. I can only try to use good judgement when around her. Which isn't very much, considering the distance between us. Literally and figuratively.

That is why I did not like to hear that you cry because you are too sensitive, Leafy ~ more sensitive than anyone. Because there was no joy in the claim of it for you. It wasn't "I am so delightfully sensitive to the nuances of wind and light and fire." It was: I am too sensitivity. Because there was no satisfaction, but there was a kind of denial ~ deep and savage ~ in the defiant way you claimed sensitivity as your sole truth, as the only thing about you that mattered.

Deep and savage, that sounds kind of sexy to me. Lol.
I am delightfully sensitive to everything, wind, clouds, waves, music, colors......and much more, painfully sensitive to excess noise, crowds, conflict, violent movies. It is definitely a personality trait. I am enjoying exploring it, the studies on it are pretty fascinating Cedar.
http://phys.org/news/2010-04-sensitive-people-brains-differently.html
I recognize myself in this stuff I am reading. I was super introverted when I was a young child, but am extrovert now. I just have to figure out how to channel the good parts of this trait. Interestingly, one of the things I have read is the importance on healing past wounds. It is exactly as you wrote, Cedar, when those wounds have healed, a whole new world opens up.

Sensitivity is a part of what is human. It is not the whole ball of wax. It is not something that should find you crying alone in a darkened room. It is not something by which you identify yourself as weaker or wrong and them as stronger, and therefore, correct in their interpretation of your reality.

For you.

Spit them out, Leafy.

I will spit out the part that labeled my deep feelings wrong. It is the center of my creativity. The core part of me where my imagination wells up from.
Anyway, of course I cried when my siblings were horrible to me, that sh** hurt. I wanted to stay in my room because it was safer for me.
Doesn't everyone need alone time when feeling sad and miserable? Doesn't everyone need a good cry every once in a while? It is not that I am crying all of the time anymore. Yes, for sure when I was a child, I cried a lot. I had every right to cry, I grew up in my own home being terribly bullied. It was a natural reaction in a hard situation. I learned to cry alone, because I was not allowed to cry, otherwise. How weird is that? How confusing?
What I have to look at , is the knee jerk reaction when I am around my FOO, that sends me reeling like Dorothy in the tornado flown house, wrenched from its foundation. I do not wind up in Munchkinland. I am that child all over again, smack dab in the past.

Then, you were beating yourself up for it, using it to hurt yourself further because you had not become a famous artist or a writer or a musician. When in fact, you have done all those things. Just not with an intense enough focus to have received outside world approbation. Independent judgment of your talent would justify your sensitivity to FOO.

See the circle, New Leaf?

No way you could win.

You are more than your sensitivity.

Thank you Cedar, yes, this is all true. Dad would tell me what a terrible thing to waste the gift I was blessed with. What he didn't understand is that I did not have the confidence. Yes, I have done all those things, painted, sculpted, wrote poetry.
It is a circle that I need to break free from. All of these things that I have done are a part of me. I need to do them, like I need to breathe.

You were beating yourself up because you had not disciplined your sensitivity enough to save yourself ~ to justify your existence (!) here in your wonderful life that is yours that you are living.

***
In their eyes.

***
How extraordinary, and how awful, Leafy.

It is awful, isn't it? I used to think, "What might I done if.....I was cherished...." But my life is not over, there is much I can do now. As the song says the book is still unwritten......That is the extraordinary part. That I can awaken each day, and see through my own eyes. You know Cedar, I entered works in a juried show when I was 25, and won a prize for a sketch I had done. I was painting like a Mad Hatter back then. This woman approached me and wanted to know if I had any other work. I had several paintings at home. There was one, I was not fond of, Hubs said "Show it to her anyway, you never know..." So, I reluctantly put it up on the wall. It was the first painting she gravitated to and bought. I will focus on that memory, when I start my new life painting again.

For you, and for me and Copa too, because of course I saw the value of my life too, through their eyes and not my own.
I was so fixated on that Family Dinner.

You can have the dinner with true friends. Friends are the family we choose.

Somewhere in here is why I label myself coward.

A moral slippage on my part, not to have hurt her back.

Maybe, we are slipping into matricide territory, again.

So, I see that I am afraid of my sister.

Nothing else could explain these feelings, given what I now know about what she has done and who she is.

I am afraid of my sister too Cedar. She is strong and overpowering at times. Like the wicked step-mother, and I am her Cinderella, but there was no ball, glass shoe or prince.

So, what is happening to me with this dreaming I am doing lately is that my internals are trying to go back to the old, comfortable ways of seeing. I am like everyone. I would like to be loved. It would mean so much to me, to be loved. But I am not. Not by them; not by them at all in any smallest sense of the generosity and joy that is what loving is, all parties growing.

Could it be that they love you, but their version of love is really yucky. My father in law claimed to "love" my mother in law, but he was abusive and controlling. It was a sick love, yes, not love at all.
That is what is so confusing. So, then what is love?

It is the same thing I think Leafy as what you do when you post beautiful pictures of lighthouses.

Lighthouses.

Guidance to the place we are determined to go.

Good for you, Leafy.

Lighthouses and Maya Angelou and all the mentors we need to focus on to help us come into our own. That is where we are heading. Real, not role. Healing. For me, there is something about forgiveness, therein.

I like that. "I forgive, I'm finished with it." So done.......So it is okay to love them, forgive them, and also to be done. Done. Moving on........

So, that would be why I love that imagery of the stars, and of the dung beetle, especially.

Everything that matters to her, she protects and carries with her, navigating by the stars, the ball of dung turning to compost over time and once her babies are hatched, all of them busily making more compost and enriching the Earth.

Alone.

She is alone, without her sister and mother, like me.

But she is fine, navigating by the stars.

She is fine, Cedar, and so are you. You are wonderful in every way.

So, that's Shakespeare, of course. One of my favorite things. I find surcease, there. In the green, and in the rain....

Like you do Leafy, with the imagery of the Lighthouse.

Or, like Copa does in the passionate reclamation of self that is Tango.

Or like I did, with the pain that echoes the music that becomes the exquisitely precise language of bone and muscle and will that is ballet.

Yes.

My heart is more tender and open now than ever in my life ~ other than with my babies.

Yes.

I will find other people to love...but I cannot, of course, because I do not trust.

So, I will just be an observer, then.

No, no. You will find other people to love, and who will love you back, like D H. Because you will learn to trust with your eyes. Your eyes, Cedar.

How is it that they could know me, and never once have loved me.

That is what we are all still doing here, I suppose. Learning how they see, and learning how they see us.

Still it doesn't feel very nice.

It doesn't feel nice. They were afraid of your gifts. They didn't and don't understand you. How sad for them and you, that they missed out on the beautiful way you have with words, how you delight in poetry, how incredibly intelligent you are. We are blessed here, to have your perspective, to be able to marvel at your thought process. I don't know how in the world they could treat you the way they did, and do, Cedar. The only explanation I can think of, is that your gifts frightened them. Just as my being sensitive was something to squash, growing up. I think my parents feared for me, going into the world, thusly. You know something though? I just read a comment from Viktor Frankl that the supposed "weak" emotional, sensitive types, became the survivors of the camps. He said they were able to go inside of themselves and pull out amazing strength. It was the more seemingly "robust", who perished. Isn't that something?

So, now we are a dung beetle, everything that matters to us our own and well fed and well protected, and we are navigating by the stars. But...where are we going? There is nothing we need. We carry it with us. There is nowhere to go or not to go. We are following the stars. But really, we are already where we are.

Really we are, and we always have been. We just didn't know it. "There is no place like home" Home is .....us.

Those stars, those lighthouses...Copa. What is your imagery. It would be in the fire and flare and passion of Tango. Just that color of more red than orange, the skirt flaring and flaming around you. I always did see you that way Copa, do you remember? The Latina on the motorcycle, on the Harley Davidson, in the Sun.

No helmet.

No fear.

No fear.
One confident step forward at a time.

I have to go for my walk now, then to work, then to class.
It is a ten hour day for me. ugh. But I will do it.
So, it will take some time for me to respond, I apologize.
I do so appreciate your response and thoughts.
It is like coming home and finding a beautifully wrapped present.......
Thank you as always Cedar, for the time you take to walk through this with me.
Copa, I hope you get your laptop soon.
Anyone else following along, chime in with your story.
It is hard to look at the past, but very incredibly freeing.

May your day be joyous and peaceful
(((HUGS)))
leafy

The waves on the North Shore are predicted to reach 30 feet today. There is nothing quite like seeing surf that large. Sigh.
I will have to watch them on the news.........got to go to work!!!

leafy

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I think that our strength was and is a fearsome thing to them.

I suppose this could be. I mean, I could see how it could be some kind of fear or disquiet fueling the need for alliance. But who would ever be afraid of me?

I am serious.

Fear would not account for my mother drawing back her arm as though to strike me when I was already a grandmother. It is something other than fear I think, Leafy.

Something worse, that has to do with our not being destroyed into some mindset that would understand both the win and the game, maybe. Something to do with the sibs, and with a desperate kind of maleablity and with the primary abuser's power.

It always comes back to the primary abuser's lust for power over. To her demand that her own children become mirrors reflecting her and nothing else; and no smallest part of themselves.

So, for me, the question is how to undo what I was taught before I could think. They say to give them the child, and they will give you the man. That we have such a terrible time undoing the way we were taught who and how to be.

Here is an example. Another level has been shattered, for me. Almost automatically now, I work in the chopping onions way. I am aware of really nasty feelings washing up, and I am passing the time of the day with them. And I get it that I will come through this layer too, stronger and more myself.

So what I think it is is that we were hurt as toddlers. When we raged and said "NO" we probably "got our blocks knocked off". That could be why everything is so twisted. We not only did not have words, we were only two.

We still did not know how to use the bathroom.

We did not have the capacity to make fine discriminations regarding right or wrong, self or other.

***

There was a time in my life when I wanted people to be ~ not afraid of me, but in awe of me, so they would find me acceptable. I was all about competition then ~ but at the same time, I was afraid to actually risk, to actually believe in myself enough to try. Very messed up, as of course I would have been. So why anyone would be afraid of me....

Okay.

So, you are talking about being uncomfortable with self deception.

This is also true.

So we are back to moral slippage.

And my family does seem to think I do not do moral slippage often or well. And my friends in real life do seem to think I'm geeky, but I don't mean to be.

Even then, I didn't want to hurt anyone else. I wanted to be enough in myself. And the only way I knew to do that was to be perfect.

Except I was not perfect.

It has to do with how we were taught to see.

I learned to accept that I am just me. Very fine in some ways, but needing concrete challenge to shatter denial like glass. Denial is a funny thing, like that. So transparent you cannot see the distortions.

I think my family of origin is not afraid of me. It's all connected, deep down where we cannot see. They say the same in the martial arts.

That the opponent is us; that in winning we lose and that in losing, we win.

But I am ashamed, when I lose.

So, I reluctantly put it up on the wall. It was the first painting she gravitated to and bought. I will focus on that memory, when I start my new life painting again.

I have goosebumps.

Wishing you every good fortune, New Leaf. Rejection is the blood and bone of it. Deep enough, there is a place where only your eye will tell you the value of your work. As I understand it, the more within we go, the less perfect we feel and the less what anyone else says or does about what we have done matters.

We are doing our work for ourselves.

Like chopping onions, in that way.

And we may become famous, but by then it doesn't matter because we have grown beyond.

A famous cellist of ninety was asked about his talent and drive. I think he was a cellist. His response was that, totally enamored of his work, he was getting better. And this was a famous musician, admired by everyone who knew what they were listening to.

And fame was this valueless thing.

And if we were famous, our families of origin will still be our families. And they will still have a family's powerful impact.

But I think we are doing alright, here.

Happy for you, Leafy.

I hope you begin, soon.

I am afraid of my sister too Cedar. She is strong and overpowering at times. Like the wicked step-mother, and I am her Cinderella, but there was no ball, glass shoe or prince.

Maybe, we need a little magic, like Cinderella did, too.

And here we all are.

:O)

Could it be that they love you, but their version of love is really yucky. My father in law claimed to "love" my mother in law, but he was abusive and controlling. It was a sick love, yes, not love at all.
That is what is so confusing. So, then what is love?

Love is the agape feeling represented by the Christ. It is the suffering of The Mary, too. It is something outside of denial. Teilhard de Chardin (I don't know how I found him, but I did) describes love as Fire, and says that when we harness it, for the second time in the history of the world, mankind will have discovered Fire. A moving, living, power; bright, so bright.

That seems to have been what was twisted, bent out of shape and proportion for us. For our abusers, too. The flow of it.

Also, something to do with time. Time with a capital T.

But I don't know what.


Someday, after mastering the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for a second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered fire.

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin

***

I will this morning climb up in spirit to the high places, bearing with me the hopes and the miseries of my mother; and ther... upon all that in the world of human flesh is now about to be born or to die beneath the rising sun I will call down the Fire.

- Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Hymn of the Universe

I like that. "I forgive, I'm finished with it." So done.......So it is okay to love them, forgive them, and also to be done. Done. Moving on........

I am at a loss too where forgiveness is concerned. I think we don't need to worry about it for others. The person I needed most to forgive turned out to e myself.

We hold ourselves to such high standards of behavior and outcome that we feel we have failed when really, we what we are really doing is just wholeheartedly living. Passionate hatred is part of that. Once we have it, it falls apart on its own. It has no where to go. Loving someone has somewhere to go. Hatred, no.

Still, how do we know how to see ourselves as the (truly) precious incarnations of life, in life, in the middle of the mystery of being alive, when we remember contempt or shame, or when we confront any of the things that are so ugly?

I don't know, either.

Here is a quote on forgiveness I found somewhere recently.

"I never knew how strong I was until I had to forgive someone who wasn't sorry and accept an apology I never received."

David Avacado Wolfe

Probably, this too is one of those things we will be able to let go of altogether once we are through it. I agree that it was that our children were endangered that found us determined to flail through this. We need to remember that, maybe. We actually have lived wonderful lives with our kids, loving them and making that whole miracle happen.

We will come through this, too.

So now we know. It is not the sister who frightens us, it is the sense of responsibility to her.

What is "done" New Leaf? How are we done with our families. Even if I never see them again, here they are in my heart and my dreams and alive and well in regret and like, an appalled sense of injustice.

I don't know what to do about that, either.

I just read a comment from Viktor Frankl that the supposed "weak" emotional, sensitive types, became the survivors of the camps. He said they were able to go inside of themselves and pull out amazing strength. It was the more seemingly "robust", who perished. Isn't that something?

Oh, wow.

I didn't know that, Leafy.

Huh.

You would think it would be just the opposite.

***

Really we are, and we always have been. We just didn't know it. "There is no place like home" Home is .....us.

So, this is what my Tai Chi instructor says. He is saying it in acceptable English, so the negative fire in the phrases can only be read between the lines. But those invisible hostilities are key to understanding the phrases, and to making the whole piece move.

Give a woman a house. (Imagine all the stories you have ever heard about how hard men work. And how they feel about that. And about whether they own us or not. That kind of negativity.)

She will make it a home.

Give a woman your lust. She will give you a daughter or son.

There is one more, but I cannot remember it. It has to do with quenching Fire and raging and hopelessness. With creating in the negative and positive of that; with returning meaning and time and life itself.

Yin and Yang.

That is who we are really, male and female, alike.

Where my mother fits in there ~ well, she must fit in there somewhere.

Circle.

***

D H and I discussed evolution of internal locus of control last night.

He believes internal locus of control is learned, just as external locus of control is learned, but that internal locus of control is natural to us. Think of the willful toddler, certain the world revolves around him.

Think about how cute toddlers are (or, puppies or kittens), and how funny and sweet and determined.

That is when we were hurt.

***

When we can cultivate an almost extra-sensory awareness of our mindsets, then we are where we need to be, I think. Which is, when you think about it, what Eckhart Tolle is telling us to do, too. Separate from the emotions of the moment, realizing we are not our feelings.

If we have been hurt, as children especially but even as adults, so many of our most familiar feeling states will have to do with contempt, and with deep shame.

What else will be in there.

We would be like a camera turned toward the other guy instead of us. Our pictures can only tell us about him. This is how we remember our incidents of abuse. From the abuser's perspective.


Brene Brown's imagery of the gladiator pushing himself up from the bloodied sand. Where did he find the integrity to rise, live or die. Why not just lie there and let him kill them.

What is he thinking.

I don't know the answer to that either, but I do know that is how we think, too.

We stand up. We even use that word in our postings. That is a place of integrity for us. When we do what Martin Luther did, too: "Here I stand. I can do no other."

That must be why we stand up, why the gladiator rises to fight again, live or die.

***

Posting at length as I have been again has pushed me through another level. I wasn't aware of it at first. I am into automatically sitting with feelings now and into work and am even flirting with Germany, in the sense that I am gathering and organizing and planning and holding intentions and finding creativity, again.

I had set an intention to monitor my feelings and self talk and defenses (defenses when I can ~ they are not easy for me to recognize).

So far, this is working well for me.

Defenses feel like denial does, in the sense that something (in this case, a feeling state) is too perfectly packaged. At bottom, denial means something from the past has been keyed by some unrelated thing. The way the light falls through a window, a scent, a snatch of music. It can be, and is, anything at all.

A certain way someone looks at us; a way without mercy.

Remember Serenity teaching us about complex PTSD.

Dread. That sense of being sickly certain. That mortal fear feeling that comes with a spider or heights or wherever it is that is really how we repressed our true fears to keep fear a manageable thing.

That is why our startle reactions are so intense. That is why we have phobias.
We have unimaginable trauma stored in the images we carry of the things we fear. But what we really fear is being dead at the hands of the abusive parent (or sib).

So, again, I will say that we are incredibly brave to have come through those levels of fear intact.

I admire the way our brains work.

Now that we are deciding we will refuse the abuser's truths about us or the world, our brains will work the miracle of healing for us if we hold that intent.

***

As we explore the feelings beneath self-contempt (which will be the essence of what the grandiosity addicted abuser ~ parent or spouse or child or sibling ~ will have taught us about how to see ourselves in relation to them) then we can view our confusion or shame, or regret, or guilt, with compassion. We will acknowledge and name the feelings, but we will stay present and accounted for. We will begin to connect situations and feeling states. It is important for us to know what we mean when we reach for steady state. Yoga will help with this (or any form of moving meditation). Tai chi, tango, ballet, line dancing ~ anything we do to music.

Painting, Leafy, once you begin to paint again, to music.

And that is how we become familiar enough with internal locus of control to teach ourselves how to be present to ourselves and our worlds.

Then, we can choose what to believe about our situations.

I have been in a circle regarding my appearance lately. I found Copa's "Unfortunately, I am ugly." helpful. Somehow, it breaks the circle of vulnerability created around the issue of appearance.

I am angry about what happened to me around the issue of appearance. I don't know for sure what it was, but think how much that imagery of the whore tending herself so tenderly in the Sun has meant to my healing.

I never do know what to do with the anger. So, I envision holding myself, my ugliness, my ashamedness ~ or my grandiosity, which is shame turned inside out, with compassion.

There are many places where self desertion is so automatic a channel that it isn't even obvious when it happens. You can feel the emptiness beneath "role" though. Then, if we can trace it back, we can find the woundedness, the place we slipped into role, and heal it. I think those of us hurt when we were little are not the only ones who slip into role, or Shakespeare would not have had the response that he did to his observation about all the world being a stage. The difference for us I think is that we stumble into whatever role state helped us survive our childhoods. We grew up with an exquisite awareness of having been targeted. This translates into a kind of psychologic hypervigilance.

That's okay.

It is what it is.

Stay steady state.

No one could have survived our upbringings any better than we have.

Because of our upbringings, and because of the hurtful, confusing messages still being transmitted by our dysfunctional families of origin, we are at a distinct disadvantage in almost every situation. If we are not comparing ourselves to someone else, then we compare ourselves to ourselves.

It is a beginning to the circle of self sabotage.

When we are healed, we will move through with Zen-like simplicity.

With kindness, because that was our choice for our go to response before we knew why, and with simple.

That is all we need.

We will have been taught we are beggars; we will have been taught to self-sabotage to prove the abuser correct. Again, an example of the harm in external locus of control Once you see it, stop doing that.

To have taught a child comfort with that level of powerlessness it the technique of a sadist.

Don't do that anymore. Label the feelings and do nothing.

I am certain there are those who did not survive the chaos and downright crazy in the environment created by people like those in our families of origin. It isn't just the mothers and it isn't just the sisters. It is the dysfunctional system that will have evolved around the mindset of the least stable adult. Though we do need a safe place (an anonymous place) to name what happened to us, our healing will not happen because we have named someone in our family of origin bad. That is a beginning step, and very freeing. Undoing the harm done...we are doing it, but I am not sure how.

I think it may be as simple as holding that intention for ourselves and for one another, and for anyone reading along, too.

I actually do believe you guys can do this. So, I must be able to believe I can do it and it is only a question of time and intention.

And that seems so clear to me now, but remember how scary it was, in the beginning?

***

What did we teach ourselves about life in general, and about our own lives in particular, in those spiritual crucibles we were brought up in.

cru·ci·ble
ˈkro͞osəb(ə)l/
noun
noun: crucible; plural noun: crucibles

1. a ceramic or metal container in which metals or other substances may be melted or subjected to very high temperatures.
   • a place or occasion of severe test or trial.
     "the crucible of combat"
   • a place or situation in which different elements interact to produce something new.
     "the crucible of the new Romantic movement"

We learn that we have been victimized. That is a huge first step. Then, we learn we have been trained to be victims. That we will have been, oddly and unbelievably enough, raised to be some form of masochist. That seems to be the essence of what happened to me. Tricked into believing, with all my heart, that my abuser was correct in teaching and treating me as she did.

We never did deserve the physical or the emotional abuse the sadist is required to inflict on his victims. Knowing this beyond question is where we heal, I think.

Beyond question of guilt or innocence or blame or ugliness. All these feeling states have to do with the hurt the sadist required to feel pleasure.

We wanted our mothers (or whoever is abusing us in our adult lives) to feel happy. I know this seems so sick, but it is in here somewhere. And is key to re-establishing internal locus of control.

I did not discuss sadism or masochism with D H.

I have my standards.

I can only discuss the really sick parts here. However much we may empathize with those we love, there are some experiences that can only be learned through surviving them.

We will have some messed up belief about out roles then, because children (or soldiers being brainwashed) have their belief systems all scrambled and bent out of true. If we can remember that as we go deeper, as the healing becomes less and less a thing of words (because we didn't have any), we will be able to reach for compassion, even when the feelings are too intense for us to remember it.

That is the place I seem to be now.

The feelings are stubbornly insistent, as close to me as breath; difficult to separate out or from. In the heart of the thing, I will recognize contempt. Or I will recognize shame. Or the general feeling of ugly and of all of life being pointless and dark. I am aware that these are not my conscious feelings.

But they are so deeply present that at first, I ~ it's like I need to pay attention, and name them as best I can.

There is little equanimity here. A knife-edge contempt. Really deep. Like a plunge into cold dark water.

A little disorientation.

Those are the feelings I am sitting with. Conscious in the moment they are happening. There is a feeling of connecting the dots. Everything comes in for healing. Imagery has to do with a story I read about a man who was so poor that he had never had a family dinner. He had watched from outside, in the cold, while other families spent their evenings together, culminating in ~ guess what, you guys. Family dinner.

The little boy grew up and made a zillion dollars. But he could never be happy sitting at his own table. He always felt like that poor little beggar boy.

One day, he mounted a beautifully framed mirror in the trees outside the window of his mansion.

In that reflection, he could see himself with his family, and know he was happy.

He was not a beggar.

Because seeing is believing.

I think we are doing something like that here.

Cedar

I think we are healing, but we cannot imagine the way we are, now. We cannot see ourselves and remember and incorporate...something.

Wouldn't that be something, if I no longer wished for Family Dinner.

I am no longer outside or forlorn. I am inside, with candles. Lots of them, and laughter and warmth, too. And all my people that I do love and we are relaxed and easy. But my FOO are not there, and are neither missed nor reviled. It just is what it is.

And everyone understands, about the mirror that shows me who I am.

Fortunate.

I have remembered that story all of my life.

I wonder who wrote it.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Brene Brown's imagery of the gladiator pushing himself up from the bloodied sand. Where did he find the integrity to rise, live or die. Why not just lie there and let him kill them.

Freudian slip, you guys?

Cedar

 

[New Leaf]

I suppose this could be. I mean, I could see how it could be some kind of fear or disquiet fueling the need for alliance. But who would ever be afraid of me?

I am serious.

Fear would not account for my mother drawing back her arm as though to strike me when I was already a grandmother. It is something other than fear I think, Leafy.

I meant Cedar, they feared you, not because you were scary, you were different from them.
They feared your brilliance. Your light star shines powerfully all through these posts.

You must have shown this light from a very tender age Cedar.
They feared the light that was and is in you.

I am going for my walk, then work, then school.

I will write later.

Cedar, you are an amazing woman.
You must have been a magical child.

A light shining in the darkness of your FOO.

That, is a fearsome thing, for people who wish to remain in darkness........

(((HUGS)))
leafy

 

[Copabanana]

This is true, Copa. But who taught us how to see?

What did they teach us to see, and from whose perspective. Why and how did we come to see ourselves through their eyes instead of seeing them through our own

this happen because we knew then about them and could not face it?

You are speculating here Cedar about why you see through their eyes.

You see, there was no other way to think at the beginning. Your mother was your world and because she was a tyrant (sorry) she demanded absolutely control. That you dissented at all, which you did, was a miracle.

I will speak to my own reality then: I knew. I always knew. I would have lived my whole life choosing for my mother I have come to believe, had their not been one big break. The arrival of my step-father who was a sadistic and horrible man. But I see it now in a different way. I had 6 years of betrayal by my mother and sister...before I emancipated at 17. Those years taught me that (by force) that I was entirely alone and had nobody at all. I watched my mother over and over again choose for herself, and this enabled me to chose for myself eventually.

Had my step-father not come, I would have never learned how to be alone because I was alone. A gift, I see.

Naming ourselves because to name them would be to lose every smallest vestige of (utterly imaginary) control.

I see it as the loss of the imaginary sense that we had anybody. That is not what I sought to keep...the illusion of control...but the illusion I was not alone in the world.

Joseph chose...." That is my question, Copa. How did Joseph...how could he even see that reality. It could be that in believing himself beloved of God, he could respect himself and cherish himself in God's image

You answer yourself Cedar, below.

For almost all of my life I could not believe in G-d. Because I believed myself to have been abandoned by Him. Joseph could believe in himself because he could believe in goodness. Could we, Cedar?

I could not see that what my mother or my sister were doing in present day life was wrong.

I think you could and I think I could. Why for almost 60 years did I remember my mother coming home from work to tell me the first thing that somebody told her she looked like Sophia Loren? (I mean, really, now.) I knew how self-absorbed she was and I knew it was wrong to use your own child as a mirror.

I believe you knew, Cedar. But if you were to see your mother as she was...really see...you would have been alone. I do not see how a child could bear it. Not that young.

It was a variation on knowing it was wrong for her to kick our dog but not knowing it was wrong for her to kick me

I believe you knew it was wrong, Cedar. I do.

Acknowledging the ugliness of reality, we choose kindness as a defiant act. Here is the question: Why victimize ourselves to do that.

Cedar. You are asking, your adult self is asking, impossible things of that child Cedar. You concealed a part of you, so that it might live. Even when you were depreciated for your kindness, you guarded it. You concealed strengths as a strategy to grow up, waiting for time to wake them up from dormancy.

Look at the presidential race. How nobody challenged Donald Trump for months and months...because they knew he would kill them...if they attacked. These are strong men, capable men. Adults. All of them holding important offices. They were afraid.
Rubio did not lack the ability or the resources to attack. He was afraid of the consequences. He waited until the stakes or his circumstances portended he would survive the attack. While he was waiting he did not accuse himself as a coward. He did not hold himself in self-contempt.

Think about it Cedar. You were a baby.

We know now that it is our own thinking that created the parameters of our realities.

Yes and no.

Cedar. Your mother is Donald Trump. Unlike Rubio there was no super-pac. There was no wife and kids. There was no job. Even the dog could not help.

When I wrote that about perceptions is was not for you to hit yourself in the head. While I believe what I wrote to be true for each of us, I was thinking of you New Leaf, when I wrote that. Your sister was a baby, too, just a year older. Her understanding of things, could not have been significantly differently than your own. The intent you ascribe to her and your brother is highly unlikely to have been conceivable to a child of that age. If your siblings at such a young age were left alone there are adults who are responsible. They were innocents as were you.

But how to create freedom from that mindset of kindness which is the mindset of the willing victim.

You were not a willing victim. You were victimized at home. You had nowhere to go.

How could they not want me.

They did want you. They wanted you not-thinking.

I am somehow still in love with my Family of Origin. This would have to do with needing their approval in order to love myself.

I do not believe this for one second.

But I need words to know how to see myself in reference to people who never loved me.

They love you Cedar in the way that they know how to love. Look at your sister Cedar. Look at how she loves her grandchildren. The way your sister and mother love you, now feels toxic to you Cedar.

For some reason, Cedar, it feels preferable to think it is they who are rejecting you, and they may well be. But to them, you changed first. For as long as they (and you) could they blamed your D H. Then, when they could not longer hold onto that fiction (and you either) the truth of things revealed itself.

Given my vulnerability of romanticizing them, what would be a winning position for me in that circle.

I don't know.

Your mother and sister love you. You love them.

We watch open mouthed as the little girls take their second and third spins around the table. Until even they are embarrassed

Every time I read this I think you are talking about the little girls who were us.

I think she either does not see the child's anger, or does not value the child enough to care.

Add to this the strong need to have control.

If we see that, then we can choose for ourselves whether to go into denial or to see them as they are.

Okay you guys. That is why we do it. So we will not see their nakedness.

Add to that, our own.

Better still, stay altogether present. Crying means you lose, Leafy. It means we have gone inside.

Crying can feel like a win. For a child crying can get attention. Crying can be a way to punish too. To control. To triangulate. For adults there are far more effective powers.

It means we have deserted ourselves, acknowledging and acceding to their reality

The desertion of ourselves comes from relying on behaviors learned 50 or 60 years ago. And a view of the world learned as a 4 year old.

Either they were innocently wrong or they intentionally lied.

Are you talking here your mother and sister? I forget. The goal here is to not lie to ourselves.

My daughter says: "This is my path, Mom. Don't worry. I don't understand it, but I am living it and I would not change any of it."

I love her.

So I drag myself along behind her (or when it was my son in danger, behind him), forever croaking out some version of "Don't do that."

I do something similar. I am not sure what because my son is sitting here in my living room and my mind is blocked. I would prefer to be present to this post.

 

[New Leaf]

I was thinking of you New Leaf, when I wrote that. Your sister was a baby, too, just a year older. Her understanding of things, could not have been significantly differently than your own. The intent you ascribe to her and your brother is highly unlikely to have been conceivable to a child of that age. If your siblings at such a young age were left alone there are adults who are responsible. They were innocents as were you.

Yes, so close in age and innocent, and yet, children are capable of being hurtful and mean. We were left alone at a young age (5,6 and 7) to play outside in the yard while Mom cleaned house and took care of my lil sis. This was not uncommon where I grew up. The stage was set, and sis quickly became the "boss".
This article describes almost to the t what it was like for me, growing up in my household.
https://www.psychologytoday.com/blog/teen-angst/201404/sibling-bullying
My folks didn't stop it, in a way, I think they couldn't stop it. I don't even think they knew or understood the extent of it. Studies on sibling bullying and the effects are being reported on only recently.
Certainly, adults are responsible for looking after very young children. The times we grew up in were different. Children were not constantly monitored. We lived in a rural area, and kids in my neighborhood played together in each others yards without adult supervision. We roamed the neighborhood freely.
The purpose of reviewing my childhood is not to place blame, but to understand what I went through and how it shaped and affected me into my adult life.
This pattern of bullying continued until my teenaged years. Home was not a safe place for me.

Crying can feel like a win. For a child crying can get attention. Crying can be a way to punish too. To control. To triangulate. For adults there are far more effective powers.

While this is true in certain cases, it was not for me. It was very confusing to be treated badly, cry because my feelings were hurt, then be told to "man up". I understand that my parents were trying to toughen me up, to be ready to go out into a harsh world. Crying was never a win for me. I was reacting normally, to being treated poorly. My parents responded negatively to crying, so there was really no place for me to turn to.
I don't necessarily look at crying as losing either. It is a response to an emotional situation. Some people cry more readily than others. I cry when I am happy, at beautiful music, movies. It is just a part of me. I am okay with it.

As far as my sibling relationships now, I am seldom with them, because of the distance between us. The past few years have been particularly emotionally charged because of Dads illness and death, then Moms illness. The old patterns emerge. What is interesting, is that sis's domineering personality and insistence at having things go her way, has created rifts in her relationship with brother and lil sis. It has been sort of an "ah hah" moment for them.

What I do need to be careful of, is triangulating. This happened when Dad was very ill, and older sis would call me. Her spin on things was very different from my other sibs. Looking back, I can see that sis was trying to sway me to her corner. She was successful at this at one point. Now, I find when my opinion differs, she gets very angry with me. She is entitled to feel as she does. What I have to remember, is that sometimes, the past comes roaring back and I react with overwhelming feelings and role. I need to hold onto myself and be real.

Despite all of this, I do have some very fond memories of growing up. My folks did the best job they could.

I do have to be mindful of not falling back into patterns of self loathing. I take on the role of being my own bully. That is where I want to go with all of this, create healthier habits, turn down the negative voice in my head. Embrace vulnerability and uncertainty, let go of ideas of perfectionism and certainty.

While I have thought about my childhood off and on throughout my life, it is interesting that things really came to a head when the situation with my two girls became so desperate. It woke up a lot of those old feelings.

Having the opportunity to review this here, has been a huge release. I find that I can understand my past, and lay some things to rest, while trying to figure out how to move on and grow, heal the old wounds, learn a bit more about myself and recognize when I am slipping into role. I am grateful for the help I have gotten through the FOO forum.

My situation is very different from yours and Cedars. I am not shunned by my sister or mistreated by my Mom. My FOO, is concerned about my two, and has not judged them, or compared them with their own children.

While the old roles do come back from time to time in my encounters with my sis, for the most part, I can say that we do love one another. We are just two very different people, with different points of view. Mom and Dad did the best they could to give us a good life. My sibs are very busy in their own lives, and when we have gathered together in recent years, it has been through some very hard ordeals, navigating through illness and loss.

I love my family.

Losing ones parent to death is a threshold crossed. I miss my Dad. He was a wonderful man. It was hard, witnessing his decline in health. Harder still because I live so far away. When I visited, he was deep in thought and more to himself than ever. He had suffered through several debilitating illnesses before he passed. Once robust and healthy, spending much of his time outdoors tending to his gardens and projects, he was confined indoors the last few years. Mom was worried he would fall. She was his caregiver and their roles switched. She became the decision maker. They sold their home in the country and moved to a senior living area. This must have been a very difficult transition for my Dad. I understand now, why he was so quiet and reserved. It was hard for me when I went to visit those last years. Now, looking back, I understand why he was so quiet. His life had completely changed. I think he was working hard at his life review, as well as struggling with pain and his demise. I do regret not being there when he passed. I am determined, if at all possible to be there for my Mom, but I do realize that may not be a reality, given the distance between us.

Mom, is doing well, and continues to baffle the doctors. I am thankful that she is still here with us.

Sis is still urging me to visit more often, as she did with my Dad. I cannot afford to go twice yearly. She has a hard time with this. We speak occasionally on the phone, and are working at rebuilding our relationship.

I think I have reviewed my past sufficiently to move on to healing.

I am very thankful to have you all follow along on this journey with me, and offer your perspective, understanding and encouragement.

It has been very freeing.

Most of all, I feel blessed for my life. Though my childhood was a struggle in many ways, it also shaped me. There is much I need to work on, but to me, that is life, trying to better oneself and make a difference in the world.

With all my heart, Mahalo nui loa,

(((HUGS)))
leafy