Another development, another update. Oy.

[recoveringenabler]

I am honored to be here Cedar, really.

I am touched once again by how harmed we can be from our parents and the long reaching damage that does to our tender spirits..............it makes me sad. Sometimes I see children in the market or anywhere and I recognize the hurt look in their eyes...........someone has done damage to them already and I can't tell you how much that hurts my heart. I know that path that child will endeavor down to try to find herself, to try to be whole and complete, to try to have healthy relationships..............or perhaps to go down the other path, to harm others, to inflict more pain..............it's a terrible thing this thing we call child abuse. I used to think it was uncommon, but so many parents just don't know how much they can harm a vulnerable child looking to them for safety and love.......................well meaning parents can do harm too, not just parents who are actively abusing............

I feel sad for the child you were Cedar, that you sustained the injuries you did and felt fear about just being yourself. Me too, I felt that fear as well. And, you're right, it ends up being about trust.........and letting go of fear. In the Course in Miracles, simply put, it says there are two states we can be in, fear or love and we get to choose. Fear constricts us, makes us rigid, stuck in some kind of control and judgment............the opposite of expanding and including............when we are little and afraid we become very good at living with fear and not being real............and controlling..............and enabling. Fear has many faces..............all of which rob us of life.

I had an image of myself many years ago being encased in plastic wearing a long evening gown...........(like Loretta Young in a very old TV show she used to do when I was a kid, wearing evening gowns................) and I could see how stuck I was in that role...........in that plastic..........I just wanted OUT. It's been quite the journey out of that plastic, let me tell you. And, as you said, it isn't fun or easy, so one can really empathize with those who opt out and just stay stuck!

I have that feeling too................I don't have to DO anything...............there is nothing TO do. It's pretty great too. It was an "inside job" Cedar...............we created the roles to survive and then we had to dismantle them to live. Sigh.

One thing I am clear about is this.............you can't go back. Once expanded out you can't constrict again, now it hurts and you know what you're doing..............just can't fit into that plastic mold anymore.

Your intention to be kind to yourself and love yourself is working. It's remarkable for me to observe your process and watch you blossom. My all time favorite quote is by Anais Nin..........
"And the day came when the risk to remain tight in a bud was more painful than the risk it took to blossom."

It can be painful to blossom, much like giving birth to ourselves..........as we blossom, we break up all the stuff which has been holding us so tightly and that hurts............and then we can become the beautiful flower we were meant to be............

Keep asking yourself what it is you want Cedar................really want..........

 

[Echolette]

But I think I dump the shame on myself. I step away from my careful detachment and say.....whoa!!!!! Stop kidding yourself! Stop letting yourself off the hook! You MUST have done a terrible job or they wouldn't be this way!!!! Look at all your friends' kids....they are fine, and they have different parents...I am the lowest common denominator. The sense of shame. Are you through it? CAn you get past it? It knocks my knees out from under me every time.

 

[Echolette]

I need to add...I LOVE that you are strong enough to be offensive. What a funny thing for you (and me, and us) to uncover. What a great feeling to counter some one, to oppose them, to be frank, and not to be afraid. It comes and goes for me. I am offensive, comfortable in it, then afraid two days later, and I back down even without being asked to do so. Do you find it so, or are you in a place of more consistency?

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Recovering? I loved Loretta Young, too. I wanted to be her. To this day, I "dress" for dinner.

:O)

*******

I'm finding that everything is a choice, and that it always was. The choice is in learning to respond from a sane place, instead of from the hurt, confused place our abusers told us was real. It was never real, that place. That place is the place of power over. Our abusers could only create a place of power over for themselves by destroying us.

So, they did.

It sounds so goofy that I keep bringing up the Wizard of Oz ~ and you guys don't know the half of what I don't post! Crazy stuff about the Hero's Journey, every character from the Wizard of Oz.

Every character from the W of O, and every character a part of me I had to win, and win back, and practice at believing and having and being. The brain, for those abused into believing the abuser's reality that they are the fearsome, all knowing God and we are...not much of anything, really.

Victims.

The heart, for those abused into believing abuse of any kind could ever be love.

Courage...those reading along with me know I believed myself a coward, believed that when the chips were down, I would disappear. So sadly, that is what I did then. Literally disappeared from myself, trapped in that toxic reality my abuser created and believed me into. Except, there was enough of me left to remember, and be ashamed of, myself for not attacking the abuser. So, I was able to go back and rescue myself. Know what everything my abuser taught is sealed beneath, Echolette?

Shame, and hatred, and contempt.

You are so worth fighting for, looking for, finding and freeing and cherishing. You must commit to functioning as your own witness, Echolette. You are safe. You survived. Now, you are going back for the rest of yourself, for the parts that are hidden away, for safety, for survival. How courageous we have been!

And we still are. We are, I am, you are, courageous enough to do this, to win, and to be whole and alive in a way you have not been since you were hurt.

We have Recovering traveling just ahead of us.

Now, it's time to heal. You can do it. It is hard. Those crazy, hurtful emotions. Shame, thick and dark and sickeningly sweet as molasses. Good. Have it. You can do it, and it's worth it. What lives under the shame? Whatever the imagery is, have it. Welcome it. This is your path to healing. You will need to reinterpret the event from your current, healthy, perspective, understanding that to reinterpret who you are, you need to taste who you were required to believe yourself to be.

**************

I'm so sorry to tell you that the shame of what happens with our kids will overwhelm until you understand and truly believe this is not your parenting, your genetics, or your fault. What I can tell you is that you can use every technique at your disposal to prepare for the shame, and to survive it intact. First, you can take a moment. Deep breath. Acknowledge the pain of it. Tell yourself you will be the first to accept whatever it was you did wrong and do everything in your power to correct it...if you can just figure out what it is, what it was, what happened.

No one who has not been through it will understand. Ever. Not on any level.
They are safely ensconced in that same reality we all believed...until it happened to us.

Then, I started really putting the pieces of my dysfunctional family of origin together. So much of what we take for normal is anything but. With the access to drugs that kids have today, I think anyone teetering on the edge of mental illness is pushed into it.

That's what I think this morning, anyway.

The shame you feel belongs to your son, Echolette. That it washes back onto you is the way you protect him from those feelings you feel at what he is doing. There is anger there, too. It is so hard to love a child determined to self destruct. The one way to get through it is compassion. I think you cannot extend compassion to your son until you have blessed yourself with it, first.

"Those we love are simply...those we love." That's an Anne Rice quote. Whatever your son is doing, you will probably always love him, always want better for him than he wants for himself.

I don't have any answers for that, Echolette. That is why we need to learn detachment. So we can live our lives, so we can experience joy and tenderness and hope, so we can feel worthy enough to take joy in who we are, and in the good things we do have.

So we can see or think about our children without dying a little bit, inside.

It's like Scott G posted (and Recovering does, too). We need to see our children for who they are and stop judging them. Once we stop judging them, we stop judging ourselves.

It gets to be about survival.

Cedar