FOO bad affects on our own children...did it happen?

[BusynMember]

"The marriage that is floundering requires rededication. The student who is failing must rededicate himself. Even the more creative individual must get past the initial excitement of a new project to the daily innovation required to realize that dream.

Sadly, Cedar, I know little about it...we were never taught the beautiful part of Judaism or the real meaning behind each tradition. All we knew was that any Jewish holiday meant my parents would fight with more hate and anger, scaring us all, because of their differences in how they viewed the holidays and their hatred of one another's families. The holidays meant "run for cover" to me. I left Judaism shortly after my marriage. The memories were so bad....it was another casualty of my FOO's bad affect on me.

Copa, I think you are finding your way, girl. I think you are on the right path. Do you light candles for Hanukkah?

 

[Copabanana]

Do you light candles for Hanukkah?

No. But I have two Menorrah's. That is reminding me of that commercial for Holiday Inn or something. When presented with an emergency, the man when queried if he was a surgeon like he had presented himself to be, and was needed to confront an emergency situation, replied, "no but I stayed at Holiday Inn Express."

COPA

 

[InsaneCdn]

How is it that we forget?

We lose our "matches". We have the candle, we know when and where to light it. But we don't look after ourselves, we don't keep our "spark". So, we can't light it.

If we are fortunate, we have others in our lives who have spark when we don't, and who can either light our candle or restore our spark.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

If we are fortunate, we have others in our lives who have spark when we don't, and who can either light our candle or restore our spark.

This is stellar, IC. And this is where relationships formed while we were not healthy continue preventing growth in the same way the initial abuses prevented growth. The messages would be the same timbre, and down we would go into shame base.

I love this imagery.

Very true.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

where relationships formed while we were not healthy continue

So what do we do with D H and M?

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

So what do we do with D H and M?

COPA

I don't know. It seems to me that the buttons are changing. Old buttons elicit no reaction. New buttons, so newly sensitive that just the breath of a breeze awakens response, are changing the nature of the symphony that every long term relationship is. There was a time a few weeks back when I was so explosively angry all the time I couldn't believe it myself. I was roaring bad words to myself in my head all the time at the slightest provocation. That is why I had to come up with: When chopping onions, just chop onions. Last night the newly sensitive button had to do with appreciation.

Sometimes I look at it the way you described M's response, Copa: "I haven't left you yet."

I hope D H doesn't leave me. At the same time, if it were to come to that, then there would be so many things to be curious about, and to see and do. I have already been a very nice wife to have. (I told D H so, too. He thinks all this has to do with the kids. Oh, roar.) Well it actually does have to do with the kids. I did not deserve what they did to me and to my life. I deserved better from them because I gave them the best of myself and I loved them to distrction and it hurts me so much to have things as they are now. This is the opposite of what I have believed for most of all these years.

Those little brats, to leave me alone through the holidays and live the lives they've lived so I had to worry myself sick and etc!

That is what I meant by appreciate.

Who do these people think they are! To do this to me.

roar a thousand roars and one...until the Earth itself reverberates to the sound.

Whoa you guys. I did not see that one coming.

***

So, I think what I am doing is letting go of the part that is guilty hurt where the kids are concerned. It isn't that I am out of control. I choose to explore it. I am happy with the results, with my changed perceptions.

We are creating a richer, fuller version of the symphony, that series of stops and notes and rhythms, that relationship is.

If only my rotten kids were here too, then we could all integrate, together.

Roar a thousand times and etc.

To make the Earth shake. Like the sound of lions, awakened just across the savanah.

And all the things that should not be there, living so comfortably in my territory come awake, raise their heads. The skin along their spines prickling.

Cedar, in a strange way, although your family was definitely a mess, at least your family did try to get together for holidays, right?

No and yes. My father hung Santa in effigy instead of placing a wreath on the front door. And to us, though this was uncomfortable, it was supposed to be funny.

And I mean, in a way it was.

They would do things like refuse to celebrate holidays and then, celebrate them for themselves and be certain to tell us things like: "Buy only the best chocolate for Christmas. This is a special time."

I know I sound like a baby.

It was about exclusion; about creating exclusion after shunning.

About taking the temperature of the corpse, to see just how dead it was this time.

Bad Cedar.

***

Copa. On another thread, you wondered about Queen Bee. I remember now: Three-legged stool. All the legs, required for stability of the whole.

So, here is something this makes me think of. A two legged creature asked a millipede: "How do you control all those legs?!? I can barely manage two." And the answer: "Actually, I don't control them."

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

She did not come to my wedding. Nobody missed her. She thought she was punishing me, but things were smoother without her.

I am all into lonely today anyway, but this is the lonely I mean. I have been thinking so much about the value (or devaluing) our families practiced routinely. How does a mother not attend her child's wedding. (Neither did my parents attend mine.) How does a mother worth of the designation not care for her daughter's child when the birth had been difficult and the daughter needs help.

I am shocked and shocked by realizing what these things our mothers/ourselves did to us meant.

My head is spinning.

What hellish reality did we come from, where these kinds of things were acceptable and where we did not understand how stupidly wrong these actions were.

You are right, Serenity. Everything is beautifully smooth without them, and was forever totally kinked up with them in the picture. I agree with you there. I am in a place now though where I can see in a way I could not understand me and them and what they taught and what I learned and it just.blows.me.away.

So, part of this is that, these days, I am on the other side of believing them.

Probably that is why I can appreciate me.

It feels like a gift.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

She is ostracized from t he FOO, but her teen is encouraged to be with grandmother and shun her, the daughter and mother.

Oh, wow.

These people are sick; evil. Maybe, there was no sister for the grandmother to align against the daughter with.

Does the lady have a sister Serenity, do you know?

How awful.

I would be so hurt if this happened to me that I would be free of the whole works.

So, now we know why that never happened.

I thought perhaps it was a good discussion for this particular board.

It is a good discussion item Serenity, but more importantly, it is a place for us to stand; a way for us to know that what happened to us was real. When we are the only ones, it is impossible to recover ourselves. It requires belief in ourselves to overcome what they taught us about ourselves. I can see the machinations in this grandmother's behaviors in a way I cannot see, or automatically excuse, things my mother does.

It is interesting to note that the more time that passes between the last time I saw or dealt with my family of origin and now, they shine for me. Just lately, they have seemed so beautiful, like the sun rising over a hill or something.

I am glad we had this conversation.

I have a tendency to pretty everything up and forget all about the false, sour, ring of cheap tin and not crystal after all notes these persons continually inject into the symphony that is my life.

I learned about a Japanese composer the other day, you guys. I did not know then why I found his story so fascinating. I have been trying to look him up online to learn more, but cannot remember his name.

We are the conductors.

That is why.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

Does the lady have a sister Serenity, do you know?

There are a few siblings, male and female. She is the only outcast.

I actually feel, since it helped me, that having no contact by THEIR choice (so we, the shunned, don't need to feel guilty) is the easiest way to detach and recover from family maltreatment. And, although they decided to do it, it is MY decision to NEVER let them back in, even if they regret it later on for some reason. And my family of choice has my back...they will remind me why I don't want to engage them again. They are 100% with me, all of them.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

This woman was crying. It sounded very mean-spirited by the rest of her FOO and she sounds like the scapegoat. I never discount stories like this because I was also a scapegoat and still am...only I'm beginning to think it was a good thing.

Does anyone think we were singled out because of something intrinsic to us? Or does it seem more to have been that the abuser was doing what she (or he) did routinely, but our responses to their behaviors were different; gave them pause, and that is when the targeting began, and the need to ally against.

I actually think it is because our responses were different.

From the beginning, we were different, maybe.

Just lately, I am very much okay with that. Little awkward, sometimes.

Well okay, a lot awkward. That is why we need to practice listening. We think differently, maybe. Sometimes though, the more I listen, the less I believe it.

So there is that.

This sounds like a circle but it isn't. This is part of learning we are trustworthy allies for ourselves. We listened before with good intentions and heard better things than were said. Then, we listened is silence and went "...what?" Somewhere between those two extremes is good judgment, is the ability maybe, to see fully and do nothing and not pay for it with guilt or intent to create something we wish for but do not have.

And maybe, a way to be alone as we are and just be.

Cedar

Or I could be all wet again this morning.

:O)

 

[BusynMember]

Does anyone think we were singled out because of something intrinsic to us?

I know why I was. I had challenges and a difficult temperament even as an infant and my mother was selfish and so sensitive she actually felt I, as an infant, was rejecting her. Of course, she did not bond with me at birth either...she told me that over and over again. And I also am not a people pleaser. When I felt something was out of sorts, I said so. My brother was not mistreated. He had no reason to feel bad or rebel against Mother. My Sister was very neglected as a child by Mother, but she is a classic people pleaser (except when it comes to me *shrug*) and did not call my mother out of her b*********. And s he had no little sister to try to protect who would turn on her over and over again.

I think abusers justify their abuse to themselves. In reality, there is no excuse for rejecting and picking on a child. But most abusers think, or HAVE to think, they are the good guys. And sometimes their non-ostracized kids decide to ignore what really happened and go along with the abuser. Ah, so glad to be out of the loop...my loony-bin FOO. There is so much peace in my life with them gone and I don't have to constantly walk on eggshells when I talk to anyone else in my life.

 

[BusynMember]

From the beginning, we were different, maybe.

Being different from monsters/abusers is a good thing. I'm glad I'm not like them. Honestly, I don't think any of them, except possibly brother, ever did a good, charitable deed for anyone outside of their tight circle...compassion is not in them for anyone except themselves and possibly their kids (my brother had none). I recall my sister putting her son second to her crazed boyfriend though. Ugh. Well, at least Son was close to his dad...

R.I.P. from my world, FOO.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Sadly, Cedar, I know little about it...we were never taught the beautiful part of Judaism or the real meaning behind each tradition.

I read about Judaism, had developed such a curiosity about Judaism at one point. I think I wanted to know why what had happened to the Jewish people had happened. The caricatures were so awful. To understand a camp system ~ that we could be taken from our homes and our people destroyed. I had not known of such possibilities, growing up. Yet, I read incredible things, or listened to hauntingly perfect music created by Jewish people. I saw Jewish comedians, and loved the characters they played in movies.

That is how I became curious about Jewish, and what that meant.

In my imagination, their families and marriages were perfectly balanced things, places of learning and honor. I had read their laws regarding these ways of living a life.

Did you know I decided to become Jewish at one point? Have I posted that here, I wonder. The Rabbi I saw was all about Masada. And I had already read that book, of course. And it was such a bad fit between us. I had enough killing stories and more than he ever knew, probably, from my own life.

So, I did not see him again, and did not become Jewish.

I still find the concepts beautiful.

Now I forgot where I was going with this.

The holidays meant "run for cover" to me. I left Judaism shortly after my marriage. The memories were so bad....it was another casualty of my FOO's bad affect on me.

Isn't it something, when we think about...I mean, when we understand the true thing that times that meant cherishment and deep gratitude for others were hellish re-enactments of scarcity patterning for us.

I have been thinking that way alot lately. It sounds like I am whining about things that should not matter, but when we add in the things every other little boy or little girl was cushioned within, then we can understand something more about ourselves; something more about the terrible loneliness and vulnerability we thought was normal.

I have been, not thinking intentionally about that, but coming upon it unexpectedly. I cannot imagine how we came through this childhood. In a way, it does seem that we knew what we knew and believed it, and believed in it, no matter what they said or what they did to us or how often or how deeply we were betrayed.

And now, we are grown up and learning we were right, all along.

So much of what I see in all of it now is so irredeemably ugly. Irredeemable in the sense that the meanness seems to stupidly wrong.

I just keep stumbling over that.

Cedar