Anyway, back to me. I made some really dumb choices. Yes, they were dumb. Dumb to try to heal with mother before she died. Dumb to give sis so many chances. I know that people tend to do the same things over and over again and still I didn't seem to apply that to those I loved. And that was it. I did love them. Ugh. What a waste of my love.
Serenity...whose word is "dumb"?
You are tearing into yourself really hard, here. Listen to how you rage against yourself for loving your people, for giving them and yourself time after time to make a different choice.
They can't help it, Serenity. They cannot see it anymore than we were ever able to name what it was that blackened everything, that turned it ugly.
“I am held, and part of everything."
This is beautiful.
I will have it as my mantra.
I want to know if you can disappoint another to be true to yourself; if you can bear the accusation of betrayal and not betray your own soul; if you can be faithless and therefore trustworthy.”
~ Oriah Mountain Dreamer
Not yet; this is where we are going.
The only truth we have is our self. That is what we have been betraying with our thinking our abusers hurt into us. We will be faithless, without illusion and therefore,
trust worthy.
But I never ever stood up for myself.
D H tells me that if I had been able to stand up, either my FOO would have been saved or I would, as Oriah Mountain Dreamer tells us, have been healed from these wounds we are clearing now, long since.
That is the issue.
We have never stood up; we have never taken our stand nor spoken our truths.
Now we are.
We had to learn them first.
At the end of it, we learn we determined our own destinies through our thinking. That the essential betrayal was ours, to ourselves. Sometimes, this seems to simple and clear to me.
Sometimes, I am lost again; seeing myself through a filter named many things, but "betrayal of self" may be the true naming.
Multicolored.
A kaliedescope.
The sadness is that what she did do, played into my fear of her, my pathology, my training as a small child to forfeit myself for her. And so when I forced myself to see what I was doing (actually when M would no longer tolerate it and forced me to respond, and to take a stand), I had to take a stand for who I had been vis a vis my Mother for my whole life.
"...vis a vis my Mother."
What we are doing here is extraordinary work.
These exact things have happened to me, Copa and Serenity. D H would no longer tolerate and forced me to take a stand. Initially, I stood against him. Had these other toxicities not come to a head, I may have left D H; may have chosen my mother and my sister. The question is: Would that have been a fatal error, or would I have stood up? Given the work we do here, I know I would have stood up either way.
We are choosing, in every instance we are the ones choosing.
How extraordinary.
But there has been a way that I softened the isolation. It would not be adversarial, to the extent that I could avoid this. I will find a compromise or a go around. Essentially strategies assumed by the powerless, or by women when they were so.
You were writing about the isolation in having taken a stand.
Perhaps we are coming through enmeshment then. We are fledglings, coming into the power of flight; learning to savor, and not to fear, the exhilaration of isolation.
Here is a question: Are there such things as positive tapes. Do we all run tapes or is it only those of us, forced by our abusers to learn and abide by betrayal of the self, who hear that negativity surrounding every smallest thing.
"That'll do, pig."
Think about it.
That one, I could access.
We are doing good work.
M has often said that he did not understand why I stand up to and oppose him and not anybody else. It seems patently clear to me. He is strong and I do not fear hurting him. I know he may hurt me, but not kill me. I trust his integrity. Not in the moment. He fights dirty. But in the end of it. He does not take advantage of somebody injured or weak. He is not a predator.
With my Mother, even if she would have killed me, I would have preferred to die. At the end. I did.
D H, the same. Except that D H can be too pushy. That is why I stand up to him;
that is the essence of why we are together. There is the energy; that is where we play.
D H is not a predator, either. I am beginning to think "nice" equals predator.
I am beginning to think that, but I have always known it.
You can spot them a mile away.
I used to watch myself reflected in those mirrors they hold up. A kind of narcissism, then. Now those mirrors have gone dark. I know the answers regarding those facets of self.
No more vulnerability to those particular kinds of predation.
So...what about compassion?
With my Mother, even if she would have killed me, I would have preferred to die.
There is a key here that unlocks betrayal of self. Or there is a key here that illuminates the nature of the struggle or names the opposing forces.
There is a key, a thing we must envelop or devour.
Or both.
"But, when we are willing to cultivate greater presence with our own experience and to listen to the ‘knowing’ that guides us then opportunities open for authentic connection and flow."
My Mother was not interested in authentic connection. She wanted what she wanted. That was my Mother.
Each time Copa, you define your Mother's response to life, or to you, and not your own. You, Serenity, me ~ we grieve authentic connection with our mothers.
That is the wound.
Every betrayal flies from there. Like a connection that was never made as so, the music cannot play.
Here is a scary dream, the scariest nightmare ever, about my grandmother's house. I think I finally understand.
And celebrate it.
"
The wires connect and the music...plays, of its own accord."
We are meant to be whole; even in this time of healing, our consciousnesses are just along for the ride.
It is time. It would be happening whether we were watching or not.
I am my own little flower. With just 4 little impossible thorns. I will love her. I will take care of her. I will protect her. I will soothe her when she is sad and cries. What is it? I will draw a fence, around my little flower self, so that the sheep do not trample her.
From The Little Prince, I learned that we come to love through responsibility, through caring for.
That is what I learned, there.
Caring for is a choice having nothing to do with the thing cared for. It is a choice we make having to do with ourselves, and with who we might wish to be. It awakens no sense of obligation in the loved thing.
Remember Tom Hanks and how he loved Wilson? And Wilson took on the Wilson identity as the character needed Wilson, needed a Wilson, needed any Wilson.
This is true.
But I don't know what it means.
***
But I think it has to do with the nature of the mother's love, and with how that felt; with the balance attained and the wrongness of it in interpreting the challenges anywhere other than in relationship with our mothers.
It has to do with that.
Something about Copa's four thorns.
Something to do with that.
Cedar
