Do the holidays bother those of us with little to no FOO?

[Scent of Cedar *]

I don't know, Copa and IC. I am close as my own breath to both women.

I think my grandmother saved me, and all of us, because she just loved us. This changed everything for us then, and comforts me even today, when I cannot help or change things for my own grands and realize that I have changed everything already by loving them as I do.

When I was little, knowing my grandmother was out there in the world somewhere, knowing she would be waiting with open arms or sending some little thing in the mail opened and nurtured facets of self that my mother, so I now understand, after the work we have done here, would have seen destroyed.

Thinking of the things my mother has said about my grandmother and the changed way it left me feeling about her, and how those changed feelings devalued me in my own eyes ~ this is all a piece of everything that happened, but I don't know yet how to see it or heal it or leave it alone.

But I do know that my mother seems determined to destroy my grandmother's memory, to this day. I have posted before about my mother's glee at being the one left to tell the family story, and the geneology and the pseudo-murder, and the presentation of my grandmother as a very bad woman, and a very bad mother.

Actually, my grandmother came to live where she did because she moved there to become a woman welder during WWII. So, when we see those Rosie the Riveter posters from that era, that is what my grandmother did.

She was very beautiful, and loved wearing glamorous things and driving fancy cars.

So, she must have been extraordinary.

She was, to us.

Cedar

I don't know very much about any of that. I do know a mother and a daughter do not generally spend their first night together after a father's death running down the daughter's grandmother. It isn't that my mother had not told me all of those things before. It is that she knew I was there for her, to listen, to be present with my full attention.

And we had traveled very far to be there then.

And that is what my mother did with that time.

And I hear everyone talking about loving and forgiving and believing. But I think we must first love and forgive and believe ourselves. We cannot even see clearly, until we do. It has to do with integrity of self, and with self respect.

We have to see through our own eyes, or we will always see through theirs and believe that somehow, the abuser was right or justified or unaware or not responsible. And sometimes, that is true. But there are times when that is not true.

And though there can be ugly things learned, it is better to know.

 

[InsaneCdn]

And I hear everyone talking about loving and forgiving and believing

We do not have to believe that wrong is actually right. We don't have to accept that what our abusers did is actually right, in order to forgive.

Yes, we have to learn to love and believe and accept ourselves, and what we have seen and been through. We can then choose to forgive, choose to love, as we see fit. Love, and forgiveness, and belief, are gifts we give ourselves and others, but they are GIFTS, not a right or expectation.

I believe that things that were said and done, were wrong. I also believe that the outcome wasn't necessarily intended (in the case of my FOO, for the most part), which makes it easier to forgive the individuals, without changing how I see the experiences and the outcome. If that makes sense.

 

[Copabanana]

generally, the justification is simply that the person (A) will not tolerate anything or anyone who makes this person's (A's) faults and flaws more obvious.

Insane, this was a brilliant post. I believe the same thing but did not know how to explain it. Yours was textbook.

She was very beautiful, and loved wearing glamorous things and driving fancy cars.

So, she must have been extraordinary.

Cedar. I will emulate her. What a role model. Loving and wonderful and classy. Do you identify with her? I think your mother was envious and jealous. Your mom I think is a racehorse. She did not come close to your Grandmother.

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I am coming to believe we have no choice about loving. Our people or pets who witnessed our lives or the landscapes that formed our lives even, are always with us. Think of a sunny day in your childhood. All the scents and colors and sounds and your emotional tone ~ all of that will be there in the memory of the sunny day. That is the way it is for us, well or poorly raised, as we live our lives. The prevailing emotional tone will be how we came to understand how to perceive ourselves and everything else unless, and I could be wrong here, unless we have been abused. In those traumatic instances, we will have learned to see and not see, to feel, and not feel. That is why, as I heal now, scents are sweeter. The quality of the light is brilliantly brighter. There was a time last summer, just after we went through the promised/threatened phone call from my sister. Remember how scared I was about what to do, what to say, when she called or if they should come to my door, demanding to know who I thought I was to say true things as I believed them to be? And when the call came, I was healed enough through the work we had done here to say: "I love you too much to love you this way." And I hadn't even planned those words. I was just present to the phone conversation. Not guilty because she was crying, but almost. We had also worked through whether crying while watching someone watch your eyes fill with tears was a manipulation, and had decided it was.

I still love my family. I know them so well, and I miss the feel of them even as I recognize the killing toxicity in what they require.

The point I intended to make here (and I do, as Ellen Degeneress says too, have a point)

:O)

is that as I came through this, I came into possession of a house and a husband in ways I had not had them, ever in my life, before. It was during this time that I fell in love with D H with such appreciation for the fineness of the human he is. I think I became roomier where my children and grands were concerned too, but I am not so sure about that. I pretty much always loved to play with my children and grands, because I had had my grandmother.

Appreciation, and presence. Everyone is always talking about presence like it is some spiritual miracle only highly advance spiritual people can do. That stuff has nothing to do with it. Presence is "Just chop onions".

And appreciate the wonder of being there, of being anywhere, at all.

And we never got to be anywhere really, because the abuser insists they are what matters. We were children. We took them at their words.

And they lied about that, too.

Or it could be that everyone else's awakening is a beautiful thing filled with flowers and etc and mine is especially ugly.

Nonetheless, I am awakening.

Note I did not say awake. You know what the response is, when someone declares themselves awake?

"So you believe."

Cedar. I will emulate her. What a role model. Loving and wonderful and classy. Do you identify with her? I think your mother was envious and jealous. Your mom I think is a racehorse. She did not come close to your Grandmother

I don't know, Copa.

There are my memories of my grandmother, and there are the horrible ways my mother interpreted her.

So, there are two realities there, maybe.

My grandmother was very strong. White teeth, laughing in the sun.

Very strong.

Glamour shots from the 1920s, when glamour shots did not exist, my grandmother in fur, glancing back into the camera. Huge blue eyes.

Blond hair.

I love her, very much.

She would bring us to restaurants, and teach us that ladies never eat everything on their plates. That if company is coming, put yourself in order, then the house, then change the baby. You can change a baby after they arrive without it seeming rude.

She had a mangle in her kitchen. That is a huge machine to iron sheets.

She taught us: When the iron approaches the shirt, the shirt would cry out if it could. But, like God does to us, we iron the shirt to smooth the wrinkles and make it beautiful.

She was my father's mother.

Cedar

 

[InsaneCdn]

The prevailing emotional tone will be how we came to understand how to perceive ourselves and everything else unless, and I could be wrong here, unless we have been abused. In those traumatic instances, we will have learned to see and not see, to feel, and not feel.

Even IF there is abuse.
For all of us, the prevailing emotional tone is how we came to understand how to perceive ourselves and everything else.
It's just that with abuse, the picture is far more obtuse. There are cracks in the glass, some that divide the view, some that obscure, but some parts are clear. We have to learn how to validate what we actually saw and experienced, and sometimes we can learn how to relate the parts that don't seem to "join up" in our memory.
This is true, even if the abuse wasn't in our FOO, but in other parts of our lives. The impact of abuse doesn't know boundaries.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

It's just that with abuse, the picture is far more obtuse. There are cracks in the glass, some that divide the view, some that obscure, but some parts are clear. We have to learn how to validate what we actually saw and experienced, and sometimes we can learn how to relate the parts that don't seem to "join up" in our memory.
This is true, even if the abuse wasn't in our FOO, but in other parts of our lives. The impact of abuse doesn't know boundaries

Yes. Cracks in the glass. This was clearly and beautifully expressed. That is just how it feels, IC.

Cracks in the glass.

Thank you.

Cedar