Family of Origin (FOO) Support Thread Part 2

[Scent of Cedar *]

I say to myself, Cedar understands, I do not. What am I missing?

Maybe she will explain it to me. And with that, I have again put myself down.

That is what I am afraid of.

Hearts in our throats, we are flying by the seats of our pants, Copa. Flying by intention, for sure, but with no guidelines, no map, no compass. Navigating by the stars, maybe, as I had posted to you earlier.

Remember the poetry about the prisoner?

And that's all I know, too.

We are meant to be whole.

Beyond keep your fangs in your mother and your knife in your purse. (!!!!OMG, Cedar, that was a Freudian slip. I mean, keep your fangs in your mouth!!!! Believe me, I did not mean it.)

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Blanche Du Bois. Oh dear. Where will I have to go if I feel and accept the reality of my defense against being Sun Tzu.

Cedar, I am still invalidating myself, that I do not understand equally to you. What am I missing that is giving you your sense of understanding...in your gut.

I am still over here giggling that I am a secret serial killer of mothers....unable to stop smiling and giggling.

After all, road kill and prey...where could you really go with that...except the garbage and incinerator.

But Killer Copa...that has a ring to it.

Explain to me, please, Cedar, what is giving you your sense of new found power. Please point me to the place of the written words, that turned on the light. I too want to be resurrected. From the dead.

 

[Copabanana]

No. When the authority figure you paid to take you into the blasted lands betrayed you. There is a huge difference. And when he betrayed you Copa, he knew exactly what he was doing; he knew Copa, what that would do to you and he did it, anyway.

But Cedar, he never really saw me. He only saw himself. And in his life, when he went to the doors of the French Castle, on the Quest for the holy grail, they opened the castle. And everything in his life fed his fantasy that he had something special. That doors should be opened for him. That he be given gifts, and worship.

And even when it all came crashing down, I think he and his family felt he did not deserve it. He never, ever got it.

And I because of my past, I bought in. I opened the door because I felt I had no other, better option. Almost 40 years later I would not do so again. I was just a girl, really. It is such a sad and shameful story. But it is not my own shame. I still do not feel anger.

What kind of person does something like that? And takes your freaking money the whole time when he knows he is going to shatter the only protection you have and, once it's gone, betray you?

I used to fear that, because, I was afraid to lose him. All of that student loan debt, it is a very substantial amount, I should turn over to his family, to his estate, to pay.

Know what D H says about these kinds of happenings?

"F you. Get out of my face."

You see, I often begin to convince my abuser. That. I . deserve. to . be treated. better. Attempting to convince her/him of my humanity. After all I am a sweet and harmless person. I am transparent. After, all I am a person, too.

And knowing, on some level, I am already dinner on their plate. And by beseeching I only make the idea of myself as the meal more appetizing.

You cannot negotiate, after you are captured, trussed, cooked and on the plate. And that I learned from Mr. Dershowitz, today.

I realized I never needed to feel guilty for hating my mother, for detesting that fool of a woman who hurt and shamed her own daughters, her own sons.

That was my shame I was confessing. Not hers. My shame, that I freaking do not find it in my heart to respect this woman I have witnessed committing atrocities with a self-satisfied grin on her face and the meanness that is power over in her eyes.

Smug.

I thing my shame, is to have not protected my mother more, from herself. I cannot shake myself from my expectation of myself, to have been such contortionist to have stopped her even from the desire to hurt us. I see that I have taken on the responsibility from her to have acted as mother to both of us.

I still feel responsible for not saving her...from herself...as if I am the mother...who is responsible for her good comportment. To teach and correct her. I as her victim, still hold myself responsible for that. To have permitted her to act as she did. My whole life.

I cannot believe I was punishing myself for the horror and rage I feel at what that woman has done.

It began as a protection, Cedar. As a small child, you needed her.

You could not have survived then if you had allowed your hatred and disgust to have surfaced.

The internal shame mechanism prevented it from becoming conscious.

You could not denounce your mother as wrong because your very survival depended upon her.

Instead, it seems you fixated upon the one thing that you thought was in your power. Don't. By this you took on total responsibility for her horrible act. You took it away from her, in order to continue to live. You needed your mother. You did it to survive.

That is why you told yourself it was all your fault. Because you did not say don't.

Can you see it? A child trying to preserve a vitally important relationship convincing themselves it was they who were responsible for all that that mother did...because they the 4 year old terrified and horrified child did not say don't.

You had to do this to survive. To maintain a relationship with this woman who was your mother.

By the time we have an adult personality, these events are so suppressed they are not within reach to rethink. Even after years and years of so-called psychoanalysis I knew so little of this.

But I was. I was ashamed. I was. Not of her. I am disgusted, outraged, not ashamed, of her.

Good.

But I love her, too. Oh, so much.

When I asked my mother a couple of weeks before she died if she loved me she answered with just those exact words: Oh so much.

I say to myself, Cedar understands, I do not. What am I missing?

Maybe she will explain it to me. And with that, I have again put myself down.

Your dynamic is different than mine. I have got to stop this habit of attacking myself, discrediting myself by comparison. After all I am my own little flower. With only 4 stupid thorns.

I am thinking I am protecting myself from my anger at my mother because I do not want to lose my love for her. That is all I have. It is exactly the position we were in as a child. Having to hide from the reality of our perceptions and feelings in order to sustain in ourselves our belief in a lie.

I need to be tolerant of myself. Of the difficulty of my situation. I believe I will come to have the strength to feel it. I see it already. Now is the feeling. Maybe after I let her remains go.

 

[BusynMember]

I thing my shame, is to have not protected my mother more, from herself

You couldn't have.The only person who can protect oneself is oneself. No point in feeling guilty at all.

 

[Copabanana]

"If we'd only been some impossibly better version of daughters, our mothers would magically have become the mothers we needed to survive ~ to live at all." Cedar

I am thinking I am protecting myself from my anger at my mother because I do not want to lose my love for her.

I am still trying to hold onto my Mother. And to do so, I am still throwing myself under the bus. That is because I am still trying to love her under the disastrous terms that my small child self worked out.

I am committed to finding a way to love my mother as an adult. Without succumbing to horrible grief, that I can no longer love my mother in life as an adult.

I need to state here to remind myself that my mother was the adult. After all, she was the mother.

She did the best she could. In my late adulthood she tried hard to do the best she could. In some ways she did better than did I. But I will not go there, because, for now, I am trying to get better, not suffer more.

My task here is to identify adult vs regressive ways of loving my mother. The regressive elements serve to keep the relationship by putting me down. So far, I choose these, because I must feel this is the only way to hold onto her.

I developed that way of holding onto my mother, by putting myself down, what I am calling disarming myself, as a very little girl. *I will put aside for now, how come I felt I could not be a big girl, at that time.

The result is that throughout my love for my mother felt like something that was crippling to me. The goal here is to find a way to love her that allows me to stand up

The love I came to as a small girl for my Mother, had an element of aggression against her, which I turned against myself, in order to hide it.

Because on some secret level they knew nothing about because it does not exist in them, we whispered, "F you, mom."

So that was pretty brave of us, don't you think?

While it was very brave, it also was quite self-destructive. Being aggressive in life in its varying aspects, whether angry or in control or a leader or assertive....is a very useful and satisfying characteristic. My Mother gloried in being a fighter. In fact, she was a killer. So was my Aunt, her sister.

To have lived a whole life without this important characteristic available has been quite personally costly.

So, somehow, I am arrived at this quite unfortunate state, where I take one hundred percent responsibility for both of us. To the point of one hundred percent self destruction. I do not believe it. I think it is an act.

I wanted to save her from that Cedar. I still do. Even if I have to sacrifice myself.

To teach and correct her. I as her victim, still hold myself responsible for that. To have permitted her to act as she did. My whole life.

I thing my shame, is to have not protected my mother more, from herself. I cannot shake myself from my expectation of myself

I see that I have taken on the responsibility from her to have acted as mother to both of us.

I think all of this is pure theater (and I myself am in the front row):

Explain to me, please, Cedar, what is giving you your sense of new found power. Please point me to the place of the written words, that turned on the light.

Cedar, I am still invalidating myself, that I do not understand equally to you.

What am I missing that is giving you your sense of understanding...in your gut.

I have got to stop this habit of attacking myself, discrediting myself by comparison.

Cedar, in all of the above quotes I am throwing you under the bus. I am as if saying, Cedar, is the bad girl, not me. She is the one who is angry at her mother, not me.

My Mama is a good Mama. I love my Mama. Please do not hurt me Mama. Please do not leave me Mommy. Please. I am a good girl. I need my Mommy. I am not mad, Mommy. Please don't leave me.

But she is gone. And I am an adult. I cannot live as a 5 year old child emotionally for my whole life. I choose not to.

I must tolerate letting my mother go to her eternal rest. To do so, I must accept what my life has been.

But it is not my own shame. I still do not feel anger.

Well, the thing is I must feel anger. Or I would not still be in bed. I must feel anger or I would be working or traveling or doing fun things or living productively. I must be angry or I would not require such punishment.

The proof of the pudding is in the eating. I have been poisoned. I must have swallowed something toxic. My anger.

So what do I do and where do I go to find it??? I am not quite sure. Role playing. After all we are in the realm of theater.

I am angry at my mother because I could not love her almost my whole life.

I am angry at my mother because I had to be separate from her my whole life.

I am angry at my mother because:
She put herself first.
Because I had no defenses against her anger.
Because she did not protect me as a child.
Because she did not keep her word to me.
Because she was not trustworthy.
Because I was afraid of her.
Because I loved her more than I loved myself. And that is not right.
Because she had no compassion for me as a small child.
Because she took advantage of my labor.
Because she did not care how she would hurt me, when she put her interests above my own.
Because she could be cruel and harsh to me.
Because she was often indifferent to me, preferring to focus upon and cater to her own needs.
Because she could never, ever put my interests even equal to her own.

And you know what, I am still not angry. I am just sad.

I only wanted her to love me. She did but not in the way I needed.

I am finding myself thinking about my relationship with my son. It is there that I will find my anger.

And that is the way out of this for me. I can find my love for my mother and my anger at her in my relationship with my son.

I will look there.

 

[Copabanana]

When my mother did that and I deserted my brother by making him nothing?

Cedar, you didn't do this, your mother did. She deserted him by trying to make him nothing. You were another victim.

Like those terrible crimes, when perpetrators rape the wife and force the husband to watch. Or the home invasion in Washington Difficult Child where the son was tortured to horrify and get to the father.

Could you, would you, accuse and punish that father for the torture of his son? Or the husband for the rape of his wife by an animal?

You said no, Cedar. With your horror in every fiber of your body you said no. Your mother saw you Cedar. She relished your horror. You Cedar were her intended target too.

 

[Copabanana]

I returned a bunch of stuff at Sears; clothes that I had bought online. The sales clerk was very sweet to me. We began chatting as if friends. *There was a mountain of stuff to return.

She asked about my work. I demurred. I have been working, I said. I told her about my mother's death and a little bit about how it affected me. (I know I have a very poor filter. But I always start from the position that we are all the same, we suffer the same. Whether we acknowledge it or not.)

And then I stopped. I said, I should not tell you this, but I will. "Sometimes, I don't think I will ever get over the death of my Mother." And she cried, too.

Of course this was inappropriate to begin to cry in the middle of Sears at the customer service counter. I was embarrassed. And it is completely unacceptable to make the nice young woman cry who after all is stuck there trying to do her job.

So, after feeling guilty for a while, I realized, these feelings about my mother must be coming up more strongly, because fangs and mothers have been the topic at hand on this thread.

And even I would draw the line at talking about fangs with the very nice young woman at Sears.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

You had no way to believe, nor did I or SWOT, that the hatefulness in our mothers, was not in us. I think we killed off that piece of our power, so as to protect everybody, including ourselves.

YES.

Your sense of right and wrong was sufficiently developed that you knew it was wrong. You condemned it. You condemned that part of yourself that could ever perpetrate violence against anybody and you felt shame that it ever had existed.

I did, Copa.

Thank you.

Here was a hundred pound woman going after with killing affect her defenseless baby children.

My mother was fat then, Copa.

She was sick, in her seventies, and lost an amazing amount of weight.

I was happy for her that this was so.

But when we were little, when the physical abuse was occurring, she was a heavy, healthy woman in the prime of her life.

Very strong.

Big teeth.

Our family had been to a drive in movie together. So it was a middle of the night thing for my brother. He must have done that in his sleep. Probably, he had to use the bathroom but no one brought him?

I don't know.

But that is the first thing that happened, when we got home. Hearing the beating in the bathroom; seeing him, seeing his eyes, when she dragged and pushed him out, making him face us with what she'd done to his face.

Strangely, there is hatred now, where there was shame, before.

But maybe it isn't hatred, Copa and Serenity. Maybe this is good, cleansing rage at the act of a despicable woman against her own son.

My brother is a handsome man. You would not believe it, if you could see him. I am tiny, fine boned. He is tall. Over six feet.

A beautiful man.

What in the world was she thinking. Anyone of us can be taken in a fit of rage and say or do things we did not mean and would change if we could. My mother did such things routinely. Or maybe, sporadically, and I remember them as having been routine.

It would make sense that I would remember the trauma.

I will never forget his eyes meeting mine.

Really, I hate her in that moment.

I forgot where I was going with this.

But you know what? I know where I am. "I will help you one day soon." I whisper that to him, now. To that little boy that he was.

F you, mom.

An internal change of perspective has been accomplished, here.

Thank you, Serenity and Copa.

All you wanted was her to stop being and behaving like a monster. It was not cowardice that stopped you. It was the impossibility of your situation. You lacked words, language to denounce her. You lacked options or the capacity to even conceive of them let alone execute them.

Oh Copa, you are right. "...even to conceive of them."

I was only a child, too. I see the trauma now through adult eyes, through eyes that can and do conceive of some way to have changed this for all of us. I could not know the faintest breath of such things then, in the time it was happening.

Oh, just a small, small sliver of what is undeniable; of what is true, Copa. I can not only forgive, but bless myself, there.

There must be purpose. What more there is to come, is unknown. This was a pivotal trauma, relived almost continually, throughout my life. Those eyes; like a flash of something to great to incorporate.

You both would really love my brother. He is such a nice man.

I love him.

I would have protected him if I could have. What a marvelous, wondrous thing to understand about me.

Honor only ourselves.
If somebody has mistreated you, leave.

It won't even be a question, Copa. That is the difference between those who are present to their lives and those who, like us, have been broken to service the whacked out grandiosity of an abusive adult. Who should never, never have been allowed access to us, or to any child.

We survived that, you guys.

We are stronger, more courageous, than warrior soldiers who confront worse things, this is true...but who do it as adult males, with the strength and the certain courage of adult males, who knew they were going home.

We were home.

And I just have to say here, that stupid therapist of yours.... (Okay, and mine; and my first therapist too and of course this is true and I don't know why I want to protect him or what I am protecting him from.)

They knew where we'd been. They knew we were walking wounded, tortured and broken and twisted and hurt by adults the therapists would not have prevailed against, had they come face to face with them, on an equal footing, in real life.

Oh. I forgot where I was going with this, again.

Cedar, imagine the scene. We were adorable children. Exquisitely well-behaved girls. We were actually plotting. to. kill. Our. Mothers. Is this not delicious? I mean, our fangs in our mothers. I mean, we were at war Cedar. While you were cleaning, and dusting and sweeping, this was the Art of War. Instead of the Bobsey Twins I should have been reading Sun Tzu. Thucydides and Virgil.

I mean no wonder I never could plot anything in Checkers or never learn Chess. I had suppressed an identity as A HIT MAN.

I mean how much better is this...than being passive, afraid and a victim of everybody. My identity as road kill and prey.

I could have been Alexander the Great. Napoleon. Ulysses S. Grant. I could have been a contender...

In fact, I was.

Copa, you are so hilarious.

I love this.

D H said to me last night, as we were discussing my progress (which is a noticeable thing, now), that his sorrow for me, and for all of us, is that we had so much of our brain power and thought and lifetimes used up responding or reacting to or condemning ourselves over, the actions of terrible people. Women or men who, if the truth be known, we would not have had coffee with, as adults. That such people somehow had us in their power, D H said, shaking his head: "What a waste. There is no telling who you might have been Barbie, what you might have done. I wish it have been different, for you."

(D H is quite curious to know, every day, whether you are out of bed yet. He roars about those ashes in your closet. It has actually opened discussion as to what he wants done with his. (Or, will do, with mine.) "Get rid of them." he says. "Set me, and yourself, free. What we will have had is set in stone. Let go."

This is Maya; she recited this poetry this morning on Oprah Super Soul. She is still on. I recommend for all of us, learning about Maya.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

You said no, Cedar. With your horror in every fiber of your body you said no. Your mother saw you Cedar. She relished your horror. You Cedar were her intended target too.

Oh, wow. I never once thought of this, Copa.

It makes me feel weak that of course you are right....

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Oh, wow. I never once thought of this, Copa.

It makes me feel weak that of course you are right....

Cedar

Why, Cedar? How are you weak? Unless, you feel weak-kneed in horror. How were you weak?

You were criminally abused, Cedar. How is the victim of a crime responsible? Except that they feel they are. Does this make it true?

There are psychotherapy benefits available to victims of crime. You apply at the District Attorney's Office in your County. I never really understood, before, the name of those benefits. They are called: Victim's Witness. That was you, Cedar. How is there weakness in that?

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

And then I stopped. I said, I should not tell you this, but I will. "Sometimes, I don't think I will ever get over the death of my Mother." And she cried, too.

Of course this was inappropriate to begin to cry in the middle of Sears at the customer service counter. I was embarrassed. And it is completely unacceptable to make the nice young woman cry who after all is stuck there trying to do her job.

It is always appropriate to honor our grieving. This woman carries unresolved pain. You were there for her as surely as she was there for you. In the magical world that is Cedar's true core, this was meant to happen just as it happened, exactly and surely and true.

You know that old saw everyone says: (Me, too ~ I have freaking spoken those words right out loud too, like I knew something secret.)

When the student is ready, the teacher appears.

Well, there is no teacher. And there is no student. We are all learning, deepening, growing, here.

This would hold true for our therapists. For our mothers, too.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Why, Cedar? How are you weak? How were you weak?

Hi!

:O)

You are here with me in real time!

I meant the kind of weakness attending the breaking down of some internal barrier ~ of some internal condemnation then, that we were not aware of.

A breakthrough, Copa.

Thank you.

Are you watching Maya? Regarding children and mothers and grandmothers and love:

"Love."

"Don't do that, baby."

And they will know you are teaching, not preaching.

That is love, that is the courage in the kind of love that has meaning. Nothing mushy about it.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I am still over here giggling that I am a secret serial killer of mothers....unable to stop smiling and giggling.

It's the horror of it, Copa. It's the giddiness of the strength in it, and of the strength in you, and of the potential of it. It's the changing perspective of what happened to you...of what was done and what was lost and what that meant to our lives.

It's the acknowledgment that we always knew they were wrong; that they were wicked and evil and we were powerless and that we survived. How, in all the hells that ever were, did those little girls we were survive what happened to us.

It's the acknowledgment of all of it.

Overwhelming.

Beneath the laughter will be such pain, Copa. At last, you are there with the little one who was you.

The little girl who faced it ~ all of it, alone.

Together, here, we can do this. We can hold strong, hold a lantern, hold that candle that brought us through, for you.

See the light, Copa?

That is us, Serenity and me. IC and nerfherder and pasa.

And there you are, beautiful raptor in full flight, eyes flashing with tears and with courage; scarlet banners.



Good. We need you, now.



Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Anyone of us can be taken in a fit of rage and say or do things we did not mean and would change if we could.

Cedar, she did what she did in control. This was an act to establish control through terrorism. Google the definition. I will when I leave this post.

Terrorism (I think) is doing something to inspire fear and horror in those who watch. Murder, for example, just kills off the victim. (Just??) To force others to witness a murder, is terror. That is what your mother did.

Imagine the viciousness? I am thinking now of Barbarians, of Huns, of the worst crimes, like boiling a living person in water. That is what your mother did. To her children.

Who even knows who was her principle victim? Was it your brother or was it you, the witness.

I know you love her Cedar, but think about who she is. Honestly, I can understand why you do not tell D H. Because that would take away your range of options about reconciliation or not, with your Mother.

Honestly, I do not see how you cannot tell him. How you can keep this from him. Or if you should, Cedar. This may have been the most defining, or among them, moment of your life. Trust him, Cedar, and yourself.

Or do you think he will go kill her right now? Is this what we are talking, here???? OMG. This is getting more and more delicious as we speak. I may even have to get out of my bed to go and do something vicious. (Excuse me, I have to choose among potential victims.)

"What a waste. There is no telling who you might have been Barbie, what you might have done. I wish it have been different, for you."

Right now, I am thinking about HIT MAN as my designated career option. No wonder that vocational counselor of long ago was so appalled at my designated career choice.

But, seriously, I am with D H. All of the potential for happiness in each of us...spent in sadness, in isolation, in passivity and self-doubt. That is the regret.

"Set me, and yourself, free. What we will have had is set in stone. Let go."

How can I accept that what was there was everything there will be? How to accept that?

Of course I know that my self-destruction will not change it...but all I have of her is what is left in this conversation I am having inside of me. As if to say, "Mama, I will destroy myself and all I have left of life...to have another chance. Isn't that what you wanted. Please come back to me. Give me another chance, Mommy. Please."

Only crying here. It has not worked. Yet.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

And I because of my past, I bought in. I opened the door because I felt I had no other, better option. Almost 40 years later I would not do so again. I was just a girl, really. It is such a sad and shameful story. But it is not my own shame. I still do not feel anger.

"I opened the door because...."

You opened the door, you battered the freaking door down Copa, because you, in your strength and determination to heal, chose.

You chose.

I distinctly remember the instant I chose to leap ~ to believe the therapist could hold safe some part of me that was still sane, whatever in me there was that was sane. And I would risk, and I would open forbidden treasure rooms and break internal taboos set in place to protect my sanity ~ my sanity, Copa; and I knew it, knew what I was risking. All those weak little men had to do was pretend to a strength we needed to believe in. And here is the thing, Copa. You, and me, and Serenity/SWOT have taken our courage in both hands and run the risks and reaped the benefits, however painful the paths...in a way our therapists could not possibly have done.

Whose courage got us through it, Copa?

Not theirs.

Ours.

Ours, all along.

They were bystanders, Copa.

And they could not even manage to do that.

They went ahead and took our cash though.

What does that make them, these grown men who swore to protect us while we risked the only thing we had left, risked our own blessed sanity, risked the one place of sanctity we had, to save ourselves?

They do not matter now, Copa. They never did.

We did not know. We could not know that, then. We believed we needed a champion outside ourselves because we had been so thoroughly hated that we had no safe haven but the one we risked, to trust them.

Man, when seen in that light, we really do have stainless steel, or maybe, testes of solid gold, weighty and strong and our own, forever.

I tucked mine inside and made ovaries, of course.

I like being a girl, being a woman, very much. (Listen to Maya on what it is to be a woman. Wasn't that a nice thing, if we had to have mothers like ours, that we got to be female?

Strong enough, in our femaleness, to survive, and to thrive on nad grow through and come through, even this.

We are doing well.

Each of us is moving fluidly and with strength, now.

Breathing easily.

From a place beyond fear.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

It's the changing perspective of what happened to you..

At last, you are there with the little one who was you.

I do not think so, Cedar. I think I am still in the urn with my Mother, trying to put her back together so that she can come back and be mean to me.

And punishing myself, because I cannot do it right. All those ashes....So, I have to go to bed to recuperate.

My poor Mother. She needs me to grieve for her. Who else does she have?

She would not have permitted me to be an Eagle. She was the soaring and beautiful bird.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Or do you think he will go kill her right now? Is this what we are talking, here???? OMG. This is getting more and more delicious as we speak. I may even have to get out of my bed to go and do something vicious. (Excuse me, I have to choose among potential victims.)

HA!!!

:O)

Cedar

Thank you, Copa. I see this imagery so often in my life. See those eyes, feel that sick helpless awfulness. It is one of those things that, in the telling of it, sounds so stupid. It is one of those memories that, as Elie Wiesel writes about his own experiences, "...to speak of them in words profanes their sacred horror."

It's like that.

It's like that, and it's like pouring that horror feeling into my relationship with D H. Like pouring filth over him and onto me, and I don't want him to know that happened to me. Truly, I wish he had never come to know any of this, about me. It is a sadness, a dirty thing.

Maybe, that will clear for me too, that feeling of dirtiness that these things happened, to me.

The way a victim of rape feels, too. Dirtied, cheapened.

We will work on that, here.

This hidden shame, this global, nameless, unrecognized shame in us.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

M knows nothing about what I do here on this forum, this thread. I would not even know how to begin to tell him. To explain it. And I am not sure if it is the language barrier or not.

Is this concerning? I do not know. He would not have patience with what we do.

I think he would say: Get out of bed. It will help your neck. That's all.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

But, seriously, I am with D H. All of the potential for happiness in each of us...spent in sadness, in isolation, in passivity and self-doubt. That is the regret.

That is what we are finished with, now.

Of course I know that my self-destruction will not change it...but all I have of her is what is left in this conversation I am having inside of me. As if to say, "Mama, I will destroy myself and all I have left of life...to have another chance. Isn't that what you wanted. Please come back to me. Give me another chance, Mommy. Please."

Only crying here. It has not worked. Yet.

Copa...is this you talking to your mother or could it be Copa, that little girl that you were, whispering to you? "Please come back for me."

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

She would not have permitted me to be an Eagle. She was the soaring and beautiful bird.

There is a story about a dragon, about a baby dragon. I will find it and post it for you here. It is part, I think it is, part of a famous scroll about life and about challenge and bravery and fear and courage.

Let me see if I can find it.

Cedar

Well, the gist of it is that the dragon was given no clue that she was a dragon. She never even suspected this could be here truth, and she accused herself in all kinds of ways because she could not do the things the others around her seemed able to do, so effortlessly.

One day.

One day, she is pushed off a cliff or something by those who raised, and were forever disgusted with her because she smelled different than them and kept erupting smoke and etc.

And she took flight, Copa.

Soaring.

Roaring.

Dragon.

:O)

Cedar