Hey, Cedar, or anyone interested in FOO (Family of Origin) issues. Cedar, WHY NOW???

[Copabanana]

Why do you love them when they treated you so badly? What qualities do they have that makes you still love them? Is it a habit? What you think is right? Do you love THEM or who you wanted them to be?

I love my Mother. I am not sure I love my sister. If I do love her it is the memory of her little and when she was still so vulnerable. I do not love either one of them for their qualities. I love my mother in spite of them. There were many years when I could not tell her I loved her. I did not feel it. I did not believe she deserved my love. And I couldn't lie. She was mean and hurtful and I thought she had hurt me. I was vengeful.

I will try to describe what changed.

You know how some psychologists say that behavior precedes attitudes? It is like walking the walk before you can ever really get the meaning of something. And when you first do it, it feels foreign and not you. But if you do it enough you begin to change and become that person?

Like running, let's say. You hobble and hate it and can't breathe for days and weeks. And then one day, you feel like, hey, I'm a runner. Something has changed in you. The activity has become you.

For me, no way was loving my Mother a habit. Actually, nobody could have been more surprised than I was when I began to love her. I took care of her because of duty, and the fact that I cared very much if she was vulnerable and I did not want her to be alone. But it was hard at first because I did not love her as I came to. I grew into that love.

Should I love my mother? I defied loving her for years and years.

There was a staff member at the hospital that I remember who questioned my taking my Mom home. He said, "you don't have to do this, you know." But I did. I think it was guilt, not love. But there was no way I could have done otherwise, and I am glad I took care of her. I said in another post, that we were the closest my Mother and I that we had ever been in the time she was dying. I gave myself that, SWOT. To me that was a great gift that I gave myself, the memory of being with my mother, and loving her (Now I just have to figure out how to get over it.)

But I think you are right in so many ways. I think that I needed to love my mother. To love a mother.

There is no way that loving my mother would have made her into anything other than what she was. But I came to see that loving her was not about what she deserved or what she was. And everything about what I am, what I deserve and want to be. The two are not in any way connected. And that is what I came to see and feel.

If I hate my mother and blame her, it changes nothing about who she is or was or will be. It just changes me. It makes me live as a person who blames and hates. A resentful, bitter woman.

And I am not those things. And neither are you at your heart. I am strong enough to love her...and you are strong enough to love your mother...never forgetting what she did to you. It is not a question of crime and punishment or tit for tat.

We are talking here about our infinite souls. Not theirs. Theirs are their business.

Do I love my Mother for what I wanted her to be? No. I love her for what I want to be and who I am.

I was known as a kid who was average in singing, but who really brought it home when the show was on.

I brought down the house.

I so get this, SWOT.

We locked eyes and I saw the pride and joy for ME. ME. I loved that mom. I still do.

The love is in you SWOT.

The little girl SWOT was feeling very small and stupid and bad.

Each of us has these hurts that we trace back to the cruelty of our mothers. I could never forgive my Mother. I have not, still. I can still love her. Just as you do not forgive your mother but have love in your heart for her.

I wonder if I can still love those horrible memories that are the reason I spent most of my life not feeling adequate and good or even nice.

SWOT, how can you or anybody else love horror? If we were to love abuse, what would that make us?

To love my mother does not mean I accept all of the hurt she caused me and my sister and others? I love her in spite of it.

Are you sure what you feel is love...or the feeling that you SHOULD love your FOO?

I do not feel I should love my FOO. I am certain I do not love my dead Father. I do not love my dead half-brother. And I do not at present love very much about my sister. The little bit I might love her, is tied to the baby she once was, and the vulnerable person I still think she is. But she decided long ago to build a false life, a pretend life, leaving behind this vulnerability that could have been the kernel around to build a true self. I cannot love a false thing. Because that is dangerous.

How do you two validate your love for these people who mistreated you?

I do not have to validate my love for my mother. It just is. My Mother and I had a sort of friendship for more than 20 years before she died. We both wanted that relationship. It was punctuated by long periods of not seeing each other. Neither she nor I could sustain the connection. Out of this came the love I felt for her as I cared for her as she died.

I think what came forth in me at the very end, when I knew she was about to die, was that it was too late...to ever get more, to have more....There was a tremendous loss of what could have been and now could never be. But ten thousand times at least I had made the call that a relationship like I wanted with a mother could never be with my mother. But at the point she was dying, I got confused. Because my mother is the only mother I will ever have. With her gone, the loss can never be remedied.

I came to feel at that point that I had made a great mistake. That it would have been worth anything at all, destroying myself, obliterating myself, to have loved my mother while she had been alive, when I could have.

Where all that came from I am not sure at this moment but I will get back to you on it.

The two of you have hearts that supersede mine though. You keep loving, even after abuse, even after your eyes are wide open. I think I am too damaged or maybe too therapy-ized to love those who have shown contempt for me.

SWOT, that is definitely not true that our hearts supersede your own. I believe your heart is huge and open and sweet. Nor do I believe the other things are true.

First, I think it is harder because your Mom is dead. And she was so cruel as to not permit you to love her as she died. Because I believe you would have. And had less pain, because of it.

Second, you think as I did that you have to forget all the bad, shaming things your Mom did in order to feel love for her. And that is not so. You also feel, I think, that to feel love for her, you have to forgive her. I have never forgiven my Mother and do not intend to. Love is not conditional on forgiveness, in my view.

Whatever they thought they were doing, there were times when they seemed so sweet and funny and brilliant to me. Those are the places that shine, for me.

On this, I have to deviate from Cedar, at least partially. My Mother only seemed sweet and funny and brilliant outside the house or sometimes, I will admit when she was "on" at home.

My Mother could be absolutely hilarious. Hilariously funny. She did not care how much of a fool she made of herself. I am the same. But nobody in my life appreciates my humor one bit. Without my Mother I am humorless, it seems.

My sister became so artificial that I cannot point to one endearing or amusing or attractive thing about her, except the vulnerability that she has tried mightily to erase which to me was her best self.

I have realized just now that my sister has something of the women, Rachel Dalezal about her, who has invented an identity as black, coming to head the Spokane NAACP based upon her false self-representation. The entitlement to be how and who you describe yourself and based upon this self-initiated representation, to be so, without negotiation, protected from any dispute of it, just because.

We all took such great joy still in remembering this or that thing about them when they were little kids.

No one can take that away from us.

I wish I had that about my sister, Cedar. And my Mother. The reality is there were no joyful movements. I do not think I can remember a time except for when my mother was shopping or "out"
a memory of my mother where she acted in a loving way towards me.

This was not my fault. I was a lovely, sweet, adorable, loving, smart, creative child. I deserved her love. As much, I deserved her protection. I got neither.

She could not give me what she did not have.

I will not let my mother define who I am. I can love. And I chose to love her. So there. Despite everything. Not habit. Not should. Not forgive.

Just because I can. My choice. Nothing to do with her.

OMG, I just saw the goblins. Are those the goblins that have swooped down to consume my flesh here in bed? I will get back to you after I consider this.

 

[BusynMember]

First, I think it is harder because your Mom is dead. And she was so cruel as to not permit you to love her as she died. Because I believe you would have. And had less pain, because of it.

Copa, your mother did not leave you out of her will. That said it all. She did not consider me her daughter. I do not love her. If she had asked for my help (but she did not) I don't know what I would have done. There were the others who coudl do it better and I had a husband and kids to take care of. I would never have brought my mother into my house. It just would not have happened Nor would I have committed my life to her because she did not commit any of hers to me other than to hurt me. I felt no obligation t o take care of her nor do I feel badly that I don't love her. I mean, maybe that makes me terrible, but I don't put much into DNA. It is just an accident of birth. Could we have adopted and loved children not of our own DNA if we felt otherwise?

I could have had more bio. kids. I chose not to, partly because my DNA (not just my mothers) scared me. But I wanted a lot of kids, so I adopted and it worked out well. Most of it did.

I think I would have had some contempt if my mother had come crawling to me when she was dying, after having been so horrible to me before that. I think I would have seen it as her using me once again. I do not mean this is what happened to you, but my mother and I had a different relationship. She truly had never wanted me and didn't approve of me on any level. And, at the end, I felt the same about her.

Copa, eight years before my mother developed brain cancer, she had a brain tumor and needed surgery. Although the doctors apparently told 1 and 2 that this was not related to her eventual brain cancer, who knows? They can never get out 100% of a tumor and tumors can turn into cancer.

As my mother went through her brain surgery the first time, she told EVERYBODY in the family, even her ex husband (my father) not to let me know about it. Apparently she was desperate not to have me visit her. It puzzles me that she thought I'd run to her side. She was that arrogant that she thought I would. Maybe I would have, but even I can't say. It was not a given. But she was vain enough to expect me to run to her side even though she had treated me like crapola all of my life and had probably by then written me out of her will, although I didn't k now that yet (strongly suspected it and actually didn't think about her will much). So nobody told me she had brain surgery so I had no choice whether to show up or not. Whether to love her s till or not.

That was one big thing, once I found out, that zapped a ton of my love for her. Nobody EVER told me. Eventually on one of my calls I made to her (because s he never called me) s he told me. I think she partly told me to let me know how little I meant to her. When I asked her why I hadn't been allowed to know she hemmed and hawed and finally said, "You knkow...you're high strung." Moreo of that "you're inadequate" stuff.

What made her think I'd be high strung because she was sick? Yes, I called her. I felt it was t he right thing to do and I truly wanted resolution in this lifetime, not in the after life or another life, which I believe happens. But I hadn't seen her for so many years by then I can't imagine being distraught over her illness, no matter how awful it was. I'm sure, if t he it had been t he other way around, she would not have been distraught over ME. I am not quite sure what that was all about, but I do know she thoroughly expected me to run to her side if I knew. And I was healing by then. I had a family I put way before her. My husband and kids came way before her. Heck, my friend with cancer came before her. THEY CARED FOR ME.

So, Copa, I do not know if I would have loved her or allowed her to love me. I wanted to resolve our differences, such as talking over what had gone wrong. That did not mean I wanted to have a relationship with her other than to talk to her on the phone maybe once a month or once every two months just because I felt it was the bigger thing to do. This woman had not acknowledged my kids, who had done NOTHING to her, and did not even know the two I had with my husband. She hated my husband because he stuck up for me against her bothering my son, which she had no business doing.

Copa, I can not imagine that I would have taken two years away from the family I loved so much to nurture a woman who I would have felt only wanted me because she was dying and alone. I don't think it ever would have been like it was with you and your mom.

Don't get me wrong. I wish I'd had a loving, nurturing mother who cared for me, but I didn't. And I was beyond the point of denial. I knew how s he felt about me, at least partly. It still hurt when she provd it by disinheriting me, but I knew. And I did not even ask to see the will. I knew how she felt about me and had too much pride and enough self-esteem at that time to say, "If you don't care for me, why should I waste my energy loving you?" I was 51 when she died and had come a long way by then.

After I met and married my husband, we adopted two kids right away and they became my world and still are (as well as my o ther kids). I learned with my husband how it felt to be valued.

Copa, I think I would have helped find her a nursing home or a hospice (I am good at networking) and found a kind place for her, but would not have participated in the care, if I had been the only child and she had still treated me as she did. And I would have had strong family support from my husband and children let her be alone.My oldest kids and husband knew first hand how she had treated me. My hsuband had held me many nights when I cried in his arms and told him about what she or maybe Thing 2 (when we were "off) had done to me. My REAL family would not have wanted me to waste my energy on somebody who didn't even feel love for me when she held me as an infant and child. And I would have known who wanted what was best for me...and it wasn't E.

My kids, her un-grandchildren, didn't love her either. She acted like the ones she HAD briefly met were the most unimportant people in the world. The other two kids never asked to meet her. Which is good. She wouldn't have met my two youngest, Sonic and Jumper. She never saw them. Not once. She was not interested in being with me at the hospital when Jumper's birthmother gave birth to her. I got to watch the birth. My un-mother was not there. She never sent a baby card. She never sent a gift. These things are things I expected her to ignore, but can not overlook. They show that to me even my children were nothings. Now you can dis me and I can handle it a bit longer than if you dis my children. That is a dealbreaker. How could I love somebody who never met two of my most cherished possessions, my babies? I don't see how.

So I think you are assuming I would do what you had done because you are thinking of you and your mother. I am a different person and my circumstances were different. I saw what a loving, caring angel of a mother was when I had been married to my ex. She loved me more than my mother ever had.

I don't think I could have pretended, Copa. That's not the way I am. If I'd treated any of my kids the way she treated me, I would not expect anything from them. And she had a lot of gall to expect me to rush to her side when she had her brain tumor. I doubt it would have happened. I probably would have called her once or twice in the hospital, but that's all. No flowers. No cards. She didn't send me any when I was in the hospital.

I am learning to treat people how they treat me, no matter who they are regarding DNA.

I do not and never have missed my mother for one day. Just thinking about her gives me the creeps and brings back bad memories.

But I'm glad you got what you needed out of your mom's last years, Copa. We all deal with trauma and abandonment in different ways that are right for us and there are no right or wrong answers. Whenever I could, I drove to Illinois and sat with my very ill, cancer ridden friend who I still consider my sister. It didn't cross my mind not to be there for her.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

So, how does one develop the discipline of always seeing, really seeing and acting and empowering themselves based upon their own system of value, not that of another or of others? What could be the habits or practices that could further this?

I found it happening through posting here. I was determined to not be afraid, and to not be weak, and to stand up. Whatever all that means, that is what I decided I wanted. I have seen that standing up and requiring my children to believe in themselves instead of in me was so helpful for them. It left me with no one to be for a little while. Small price to pay for them to feel they are Captains of their own ships.

I want to be Captain of my own ship, too.

That is all I know about that, Copa. That, and Brene Brown's concept of "leaning in", of staying present, of learning I did not have to keep everyone, support anyone, make anything okay.

It was really a hard thing to do.

Uncomfortable. I seem to search out uncomfortable, now. That is why fear of my sister or mother coming here or calling was so distasteful to me. I should be captaining my ship, not them.

I know that my perceptions and seeing is 100 percent accurate. Of this I am certain. I have always trusted it. But I make the clear-eyed decision to empower others. Until I decide in one second that it is enough.

Yes Copa, I think we are doing the same thing.

Maybe it was even working, until my mom and my sister together changed the dynamic for all of us. But really, I think I decided to just hold steady state. Welcome family on faith, kind of. But I have posted about what my sister did every time with those opportunities. So, I don't know so much this morning about any of it, except that I am not afraid to answer the phone or afraid I will have to be rude if they come to my door. I won't have to be rude. I will just tell the truth and they will storm off.

Just like my sister when she called and kept waiting for me to buckle and I thought she had hung up so I hung up to and then, there was her voice.

But I am glad I hung up.

They are free too, to do whatever they like without me in their lives.

It never was working. I was only hoping it would. Maybe they hoped the same things.

And if the truth be told, inside my self, I delight in the joke that I can win over her at any moment I decide to. But the real joke is against me. Because I choose over and over again to give up my power and my value vis a vis her. Because I privilege her need to be above me and more powerful than I.

I wonder Copa, whether you always looked at things in terms of power, or if you are feeling so powerless now yourself that you are seeing things in those terms. I do know you are very harsh with yourself. Because you left and went to make your fortune away from them, I think you did not always see in those terms. Family are not supposed to see one another in the way we see and compete in the financial world. When we see our FOOs, we see the power over terms of our relationships to them. It's the win; we don't get the win. We wrap ourselves into pretzel shapes trying to understand why they do that so we can see the win in it. To us, together feels like the win. to them, on top does.

Remember the story of my sister and the Rolex she judged everyone by though she did not have one yet herself? That's the difference. Or back in the day when I could have had a Cadillac or whatever had I wanted the flashiness of that ~ or maybe a Rolex, I suppose ~ but I chose school. Nothing so flashy about that, lots of risk, if it turned out I'd not been bright enough to succeed there. Or is it turned out I were evil, like the therapist and my mother believed. But that is the sort of thing I would want. Not the car. Not the Rolex. My sister went through a time when she was going to go back to school. I said good for you and that it was easy. She took a class and lost interest. She likes that flashy kind of thing that people who care about money know about. I still wouldn't know a Rolex if I saw one. I have one piece of really good jewelry and a couple of other nice pieces, but I don't wear them. Your sister sounds like mine in these ways. It could be that what you feel from her seems to have to do with monetary things, or with status. That makes sense to me, that you would think that, that you would try to make sense of the ill feelings in that way. I do that, too. But the truth Copa, if you take it back far enough, is that she was mean to you when you were little girls, when you were adolescents, when you were young women, too.

If she is like my sister, she never was loyal to you. You were loyal to her in thought and action...but she never was loyal to you. I did not say she did not do the strangest things for your supposed benefit. My sister calls that "seeding into". The benefit forever accrues to my sister.

If she is like my sister, she has always had this thing going on that is not a thing that makes sense to us. We keep trying to make sense of it. We are not them. We do not see as they see. It is crazy making.

As I kept telling the stories of my sister and me, I would reread them and get a little shock of surprise. It was that she hurt my child that turned me cold. I fought that, too. Now I don't. My sister is snaky like that. I am not her mother. She is not my child. But she hurt my child. My child is so definitely not me. She took vengeance, and she took it with breathtaking grace and appropriateness.

But still, my own little sister opted to hurt my child.

So, I could not forget that.

Snip.

(I am remembering now that my sister loved it when I was targeted and beaten and treated sadistically by my step-father. So this amplifies my understanding of why it so affected me when my son taunted my abuse at the hands of my father.)

No one should be taunting you about any of that, Copa. That is sacred ground. Copa, I am sorry that happened to you. You were a beautiful young girl, a treasure growing into the ripeness of a woman, of the thing that makes the world go round.

He had no right, Copa. He had no right to do that to you, or to anyone.

Predator. Another stinking, opportunistic predator, preying on a living child. A very, very bad man. Imagine what it would have meant to you Copa, to have had a gentle, strong, intelligent male in that position, someone who could have taught you and mentored and modeled for you what the relationship between a man and a woman could be.

Think how that would have changed everything.

That is the true crime in what he did. We recover from the physical things somehow. Time heals that. It is in the terrible patterns they set us up for that the real damage happens, and in the good things they knew about but did not provide, for that child in their care.

He was a predator, Copa.

You did nothing wrong, anymore than I did anything wrong with the therapist or with my mother.

Can you see him through your own eyes, Copa? Not his. Or see him doing what he did through Maya Angelou's eyes. Believe me, she knows how to see people like that.

The thing was is that nobody ever believed me.

D H spotted my sister right off.

I would just say: That is my sister. End of discussion.

Our sisters are sly, Copa. They are very bright, indeed. That is how they fool everyone, even us. Until they do something really reprehensible, we don't take their badness seriously. We love them. We have that confused mother thing going on.

She is a predator too Copa. This would not be happening to you if she were not a predator, too.

That having perceived as I did those things, was somehow disordered about me.

Yes.

Me too.

Story of our lives, Copa and SWOT.

I think your sister did want to revel in the pain and degradation of your daughter, as a stand-in for you, kind of like a sorcerer's doll with voodoo pins.

Yes. And I hate her for that. I do. Slime bucket. Dirty little rotten person with dirty little fingers poking in where she should never have been allowed to go. Touching my children like a predator touches children or touches the child within us.

Just another stinking predator, and not my sister, after all.

Snip.

Because I choose over and over again to give up my power and my value vis a vis her.

But you are addressing that now, Copa. It will be really good once you get through to the other side. I am still so surprised. I don't know why I continued to see her like a child. She is so snaky. Like my mother. Laughing and rolling their eyes at the lady who drives my mother south. That's what I mean. Why do they do that? It's so stupidly mean. The lady is very nice. She used to be a therapist.

But she is being victimized as easily as any of us.

It's that eye rolling thing. Dead giveaway.

Predator.

It goes back to your insistence on seeing. That kind of seeing implies seeing and knowing and honoring and acting upon what you see...without corroboration and without verification...a relationship with yourself...that is based upon complete respect and love.

I don't think it's that we didn't see, Copa. We just didn't believe it. There was nothing inside us to tell us they meant it. We don't get the win in what they do routinely. Just like the story I told about my sister working the pregnant lady alone into a hefty check from someone sitting next to her on a plane.

She thought that was ~ I don't know what she thought that was. It was all connected with religion.

Predator.

Another stinking predator.

Why is this so? Why could I see who she was, and trust my perceptions but never go that final, necessary step? Was it because I needed to continue to elevate her, to allow her that protected status that she insists upon and I persist in allowing her to maintain?

I don't know, Copa. But I do know that both SWOT and I did the same kinds of things. Our sisters call crying and boom we are there. Just as we would be now for our children. It has that feel to it. But these sisters of ours are not our children. We are not their mothers.

We never had those sisters we celebrated and held close in our hearts.

We just had that stupid predator whose face keeps changing, but who zeros right in on our wounds and before whom we are helpless, confused, guilty of something we did not know was a crime. it has to do with watching someone watch your eyes fill up with tears.

No one real does that.

Only predators do that.

The rest of us cry like our hearts are broken. Predators cry to break into them.

When I have always known she was a sham. A pretender. And that I was the one who had the real strength and personal power. And so did my Mother.

Because you did not take it seriously, Copa. Neither did I, until my sister hurt my child.

We don't think like them, Copa.

Over and over again I have bought into others' system of value, diminishing my own. A traitor to myself.

I don't think that's it, Copa. It's like what we all do together, here on the site. No one is getting anything for it. All of us gives what she knows and hopes that it makes a difference for a stranger. We all do that, Copa. No one is ever going to know who we even are. Yet, here we all are, doing what we can to ease the pain or light the path or just be there, a kindly anonymous presence in a lonely time.

You do not think like she does, Copa. When we play power over with our families of origin, we don't even get it that we lost. We did not even know we were playing. We thought we were making dinner.

Here is a story about my sister. She told me she had been "counseling" a young girl who is a very famous and a very troubled young girl. My sister has no education beyond high school. She was "counseling" this girl in a religious sense. It was an internet connection. How my sister got the girl to tell her real name, I don't know. But when she was telling me about it, the sense of it was that she was important because this famous person wanted her "counsel". The girl has an enormous amount of money. That was the draw for my sister. If she has her way, some of that money will be finding its way to my sister. So what she is really doing is victimizing an already traumatized young girl. I am sure the girl's guardians are well aware of predatory people. The girl will be alright. But it was just the idea.

That is what predators do. They never even see how wrong it is. They think they should have access to money and they cover it whatever way works.

They even convince themselves they are ~ I don't know what they think.

I think it's possible all of us have complex post traumatic stress disorder. It is not the same as plain PTSD in which you had a horrific, scary experience that you can't forget. It is chronic neglect/abuse, especially at a very young age, such as infancy to three. It lives on and continues and is worse the longer you are abused. In my case, it actually did not completely stop until my sister said "It didn't happen." That's when the abuse ended as I will no longer allow her any part of my life. Ever. That was about the meanest thing anyone can say to an abuse victim. That just seemed to do it. I'm done.

I have this, too.

I like that you posted that piece for us, SWOT.

I keep getting distracted when I try to go back to find the post I was responding to. I love it that you were able to cry like that at the deaths of your real people.

I don't cry. I mean, sometimes I can't help it. But I don't like it.

And I do not quite know how to explain how the realness of what exists between M and I somehow was what I was seeking...and it has something to do with what is my system of value

D H and I have been all over with what is real. He has helped me stand up. I had to.

And I knew I could control her.

I never thought I could control my sister. I just wanted to help her through the places she wasn't sure about. I just was there. I listened. I did not exclude. I was available to her any time. I went to see her when she asked me to come. She was welcome in our home any time. She brought the last husband here before they were married, and I never breathed a word about what I knew.

That's what I mean. It's like I have this mother thing going on.

Her real mom is so darn mean.

But it's like my sister would subvert or sabotage or ~ I don't know. It would be like I would step into the role and that was my value. Not who I was or something. We do have a pretty little log cabin on a lake and so on. I think it was more about that than anything else.

That could be.

Sort of the same thing with the four generation picture.

My mom's house is on a lake too. Not as nice as this one. But they took the pics outside. So there are lots of things I don't understand. But I do understand that she intentionally and with malice aforethought hurt my daughter when she was already so terribly hurt and confused.

Snip.

Happy Hour coming up. I am going to read through your responses. I cherish you both. Thank you both so much for the freedom you've given me through sharing your stories and reading mine.

It's a confusing thing. If it were simple to see any of this, we would have seen how they do these things to us already. It was our own good intentions that did us in. I would opt to believe in them again. I am glad for all of us that we did believe in them.

That is who we are.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

wonder Copa, whether you always looked at things in terms of power, or if you are feeling so powerless now yourself that you are seeing things in those terms.

Cedar, what I am trying to get across with the concept of power, or empowering, is that the minute I choose to look at her house on Zillow, I am choosing to allow her to flaunt her things at me (as if this point, she does not have appreciably less or more than I do, but she needs this to be so.)

And the second that I see what she does to me that is cruel, betraying, belittling or whatever and choose to invalidate it, kind of disbelieving my reactions while believing my perceptions...I see this as making myself smaller than I am, and giving her more power.

I am choosing to belittle my own perceptions and myself, in order to protect the relationship. I do not think I only do it with her. I think I have done it a lot. To not name an abuser for who or she is, while seeing and feeling the abuse, and knowing it happened, while blaming oneself for having been attacked, is a power relation that has been internalized in me. This is what I want to eradicate. And to keep doing it is to cheat.

But the truth Copa, if you take it back far enough, is that she was mean to you when you were little girls, when you were adolescents, when you were young women, too.

Yes, she was. She was mean to me any time she could be, until the end. She denounced me and my mother's attorney of crimes in distributing my mother's estate, when we behaved impeccably and she behaved what could be considered almost criminally. She would be very mean to be now, if she could be.

So, we are together up to here if I do not put the word power in this, to describe the dynamic.

I am trying to say that I always know who she is, what she does, and I know it is wrong, bad, mean, cruel, whatever. And I know to stay away.

From what I understand with your sister, you did not always see it. I did.

The thing I am trying to figure out is this. I saw it. I felt it. I knew it. For almost 50 years I have run from her. But, I still let myself be defined by her. I keep scratching my head, confused, asking why questions. Feeling guilty as if I am the bad one. The lesser one.

And yes, I miss her. I miss my Mother. Initially I go to Zillow to look at a picture of her house, where I have never been. Because I have nothing else. Nowhere else to go when I miss her or my Mother. (As of yet my Mother in her urn does not answer.)

But that does not explain why I keep going back and back. I step into her system of value and let her dazzle me, be superior to me, and tower above me, in everything, when I know and she knows that none of that deception is true.

What is true is she wishes it were so. And I fear that I give that to her. And I do not know why I still do this, after so many years.

If she is like my sister, she never was loyal to you. You were loyal to her in thought and action...but she never was loyal to you.

Absolutely true. In fact the opposite is true. She has done whatever she could to betray me or to hurt me.

I am not perplexed about who my sister is. I do not expect that she ever change. I believe she feels our relationship's brokenness is my fault. I believe she thinks that I am the betrayer and the hurtful one. In fact, I am certain of it.

There is no illusion that anything could ever be redeemed or talked through, because how can you have a conversation that begins with: 100 percent of the fault of everything is your's. And that is the only conversation my sister will ever be able to have with me, to blame me and to hurt me. And why would I ever participate in such?

What I want is the same thing as you do and does SWOT. To be free of them, so they are no longer in my head, dictating how I feel and what I do. How I see the world and what is possible for me. No longer in any way determine what is my place at the table. That still goes on and I do not know why.

Even though I have known for 50 years what my sister is and is not.

 

[BusynMember]

Hmmmmm...I have a little joke here.

We can call our sisters, "The Great Pretender(s)"

Mine is good at putting on a nice act for as long as she wants you to like her. She is also VERY passive aggressive.

Anyhow, I hand the thread back to you two.

 

[Copabanana]

Our sisters are sly, Copa. They are very bright, indeed. That is how they fool everyone, even us. Until they do something really reprehensible, we don't take their badness seriously. We love them. We have that confused mother thing going on.

OK. I am getting it a little bit.

So here is how I understand it now: So I am just skipping through life, being who I am. And letting my sister be who she is, what I know her to be, but staying far, far away. Because I know who she is. But as long as we are far away, and she cannot hurt me, all is okay.

And then there is contact, usually when I cannot avoid it. And she does something. Something that hurts me or my son. I know she hurt me. I do not deny it. But like you, I am shocked. Just shocked.

And I do some very strange thing to deal with it. At the same I time, I both exaggerate the offense, what she did. Like I feel horror. And at the same time I minimize my sense or perception of it. Like this could not have happened could it? And yet I know it did.

She could not be this bad, could she? She must not have understood how that would be perceived or felt? Like, I protect her. My image of her. I cover for her. I make excuses.

I do not want to write her off, to lose her completely. Because that is who I am. And unfortunately, I have been this way in the rest of my life, sometimes. Not so much anymore.

You are right, I really never think in terms of power in my life. But others do. And I am vulnerable to them. Because many times, in the past, not so much anymore, I have worked to protect the relationship, and while being shocked, just shocked at the offense, have tried to integrate it into the fabric of things, and not foreclose the possibility of holding onto the idea of the relationship if not the fact.

There was nothing inside us to tell us they meant it.

Like it was an accident. She is just obtuse, so stupid as to not understand that what she did was so predatory.

Trying to look at the event, and take away the motivation, the purposeful hurting of us. Make it a shell of a thing, as to preserve the illusion of the person. Much preferring to see them as stupid, clumsy, than as predatory. Somehow try to take away their intent. Which is the big, big mistake.

As I write this I always knew she had intent. I did not want to accept it.

When we play power over with our families of origin, we don't even get it that we lost. We did not even know we were playing. We thought we were making dinner.

Now we deviate, Cedar. I knew for the longest time that my life was at stake. I just did not want to name it what it really was.

How can one accept that every single person in their family is a predator, and they have existed only to be their prey?

That is what predators do. They never even see how wrong it is. They think they should have access to money and they cover it whatever way works.

Or cover it not at all. Neither my mother or sister bothered to pretend at all.

They just did what they wanted to do, assuming whatever I think or am doesn't matter in the least. They never saw me in this sense. Or if they did, they did not care.

And now I see the full circle better. It was denial. Not power. I just did not want to go there. To see them as complete predators. Because to go there I would have nobody at all. Really have nobody.

Imagine what it was to live life all alone? Imagine. Because my ability to trust anybody intimately was completely destroyed.

As long as I didn't see them or talk to them even for years and years, I did not have to confront the fact that I had nobody and nothing. I could tell myself, I guess, that I had chosen to stay away from my family, while not facing what they were.

It was our own good intentions that did us in.

For me, that was part of it. The bigger thing, for me, was that I would have had to be all alone in my life forever. I am feeling so, so sad now.

Even having nobody there. No mother. No father. No sister. Nobody to talk to. Nobody to see. Nowhere to go for holidays. No help. Nobody, when I was destroyed, distraught and hurt by life.

Even that was better than knowing, really knowing, that my entire family were predators and would destroy me in any way they could, to get anything they want.

How I can even face this now, I do not know.

And now we know part of why I needed to love my Mother at the end.

 

[BusynMember]

And now I see the full circle better. It was denial. Not power. I just did not want to go there. To see them as complete predators. Because to go there I would have nobody at all. Really have nobody.

I don't know if I'm going to be able to get my point across, but I hope I can, even if it doesn't work for you.

You are using one of the thinking errors I posted: Black and white/all or nothing thinking. Just because you don't have your FOO, and it sounds as if yours is very small like mine, does NOT mean you have nothing. That is intrinsically untrue. Who do you spend the holidays with? The same people everyone does when their FOO is a sham. Their REAL family--their made family or their friends who love them and whom you love like family. Maybe even your son, who is NOT your FOO, but is still your son, right?

This is faulty thinking. You don't need your sister and you didn't need your mother in order to be somebody. You are not them. They are not you. You are far kinder and more giving.

Anyone can have a good life without their FOO, especially if the people in it are toxic to us.

Of course, my rantings are just my own thoughts and I respect how you feel too. Just thought I'd show you a different perspective. Copa, I have NO FOO and I am not at all alone. And you don't need to be either. What about M?

 

[Copabanana]

Their REAL family--their made family or their friends who love them and whom you love like family. Maybe even your son, who is NOT your FOO, but is still your son, right?

Hi Swot.

Of course, you are right SWOT. But....

I was not like you and Cedar. For a long time I was so damaged that I was unable to build relatively healthy relationships with men. I had been treated so sadistically by my stepfather and betrayed by my own father...that I had no basis on which to trust anybody. I had friendships, of course, but these people, except for a few, were not constants in my life.

Remember, I kept reinventing myself. Moving to go after one goal, then another. And it was not until I adopted my son that I had anybody. And indeed, I think that was part of adopting him. I needed somebody to love and I needed to be loved.

And I will always have my son, I hope, and he will surely always have me. Hopefully things will mend soon.

I think the reality is what you write, SWOT, that we can create family and I have. That DNA matters little to not at all.

When I talk about the sense of having absolutely nothing and no one...it is the part of me inside that is still that little girl and bigger girl that lived with a family who cared nothing at all for her. And that girl is still a little bit of me.

And I think that it is that piece of me, that little girl piece, whose feelings and way of thinking keeps me in bed, or keeps pushing me back there. Or comes to fear the very worst about what could happen to her.

And I do have M. And as long as I do I will not be alone or have to face life alone. But the poison of those early years and how warped was my experience of life, affects us.

I think the death of my mother and the events preceding and after her death involving my sister, her denouncing me, The Will,The Stuff, really brought to the fore all kinds of old feelings, bringing forth both crisis and opportunity.

I want to find and bring to light the ways that that loneliness and fear that formed my life and still informs my life, to put it behind me. As we are doing this here.

Thank you, SWOT.

COPA

 

[BusynMember]

Copa, I think I get the picture. If I'm even close, you probably are suffering from complex trauma too and I'd like to recommend a book that I'm currently almost finished reading. It was amazing for me in that it brought up something that is just now coming to light...emotional flashbacks. We talked about them in group therapy today (I go to group therapy with other women). It is proven that brains in children who are not loved right are changed. This is science now, not myth or guessing. The changes can be seen.

At any rate, the book is amazing. It's called Complex PTSD From Surviving to Thriving. For me, it has hit every point we've spoken about here and how it affects us. You can give it a try. Can't hurt. If you feel it doesn't speak to you, you can always stop reading it. To me it explains so many things, like why I dissociate so much. I mean, everyone in the world dissociates, but I do it far more than others. This doesn't mean multiple personality. It's just a symptom of those who suffered trauma. Also, it explains why I had a long, long bout with t he scary depersonalization/derealization that I hope to never visit again. Also may explain your depression, why you are so vulnerable as a victim (it is not your fault; it is your (and all of our) wiring. People who were abused tend to get involved in bad relationships until we are better... or else we isolate ourselves from others.I have done both and have even had such bad panic attacks that I was afraid to leave the house.

While I never had agoraphobia all the way, there were times I'd be shopping and suddenly feel unreal, like I was going crazy. I remember leaving a filled shopping cart at a grocery store, I was so panicked. This was before cell phones. I ran to the parking lot, feeling very much like I was in a dream, got into my car, and sped all the way home, blowing off red lights. I was lucky I didn't get a ticket or crash. I was in full panic mode until I got home. Home was my "safe" place only my ex was not really that safe. Still, at least the panic attack stopped. But that happened a lot during certain times in my life. Fight or flight. Trauma. You think you are there again, although often you don't know where THERE is...

A fear of abandonment is paramount in CPTSD. Why? Well, our parents pretty much abandoned us when we were very little and our subconscious remembers.

"I couldn't hold you because you stiffened so I propped a bottle."

That is very unhealthy. Babies need to be held. Then she complained that, at around four or five, when she tried to hug me, I'd push her away. Gee, I wonder why. But, of course, it was MY fault at the ripe old age of 4 or 5. At these tender ages all babies and children need to be touched, to be held, to be soothed, to be loved. You don't stick a bottle in a crib (of chocolate milk, no less) and prop a bottle. Maybe you had a similar infancy or early childhood or worse. (I always feel that what happened to me wasn't bad enough).

I also wonder why it bothers me so much that Uncle Vain called me "the brat" in the apartment we lived in (also must have been younger than 5 as I went to kindergarten in the suburbs). And my mother laughed, or just said, with a smile, "Oh, Vain, stop." I knew s he didn't care. It hurt me a lot. I was a kid. I didn't want to be a brat. He referred to me as "the brat" for years and if it made me cry and throw a tantrum, it was my fault. After all Vain didn't do anything wrong.

I have a bad habit of rambling, even when I speak, and to interrupt people because I get so nervous and edgy while they are talking...I wonder if this is part of the stress stuff. I'll have to find out. Anyway, I'm ramgling now so I'll stop.

I hope you try the book. You may see yourself in it and it has helped me at least talk back to my inner critic and to calm myself when I have an emotional flashback (they are NOT fun, and they are numerous).

Copa, I used to feel an emptiness in the pit of my stomach I called "the void." I felt lonely even in a room full of people. Copa, that is gone...has been gone for some time. I guess I found the right peeps. But if YOU feel that void, you can overcome it too and not feel lonely anymore. Amazing how one can be at a room filled with people and feel so very small and insignificant and so scared and shy and a lonely...take care. We are with you. You're NOT alone.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

To not name an abuser for who or she is, while seeing and feeling the abuse, and knowing it happened, while blaming oneself for having been attacked, is a power relation that has been internalized in me. This is what I want to eradicate. And to keep doing it is to cheat.

Yes.

To not name and condemn an abuser.

To blame oneself for what is ugly.

Copa, you are onto the core of it.

***

We have been dancing around the issue of how strangely our sisters behave, and of how similar the strangenesses are. As you suggested Copa, we feel it, we see it in every interaction but refuse to name it what it is.

Pathologic hatred.

Like our stories could get any uglier.

Then, they do.

***

Each sister displays pathologic hatred. Why that would be cannot matter because each of us will go to our graves as we are. We identified with the abused. Our sisters identify to this day with the abuser. It is what it is. We do not get to cheat.

Each of our sisters found what shelter or protection there was for any of us beneath the little girl wings we extended to cover them. Each sides wholeheartedly with the abusive mother in hating us, and takes what safety there is from the mother in that unity with her.

Where our sisters identifed with the abuser, we identified with the abused.

I accuse myself of all kinds of things because I did not protect and so does my sister accuse me because I did not protect. When the sisters were hurt by the abuser, they were tumbled back into whatever protection we could offer because there was nowhere else to go.

So they hate themselves and us for that, too.

Just when you think it could not get any uglier....

I felt sick when SWOT posted about the words and the sneering mother and the shaming. I could feel the dark in it when Copa described the step-father, and the beatings.

Our families of origin were murderous things.

***

Just when you think it can't get any uglier....

That is what drives our sisters.

How can one accept that every single person in their family is a predator, and they have existed only to be their prey?

I think it is that the sisters identified, went into some kind of exclusive unity with, the terrifying abusive mother. They were scared too. In addition, they hate us as appropriate targets for the hatred they cannot feel for the mother. They hate us again, on another level, when they hate and detest us for the safety they needed when the mother betrayed them and abused them too, and they hate us for the safe harbor we did represent when the mother hated them, too.

I think that is the part they hate most. If we were only objects to be hated and defiled, they could turn away. But we were also pseudo-mothers to them. We represented protection and we did protect them.

Just when you think it can't get any uglier....

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Cedar, what I am trying to get across with the concept of power, or empowering, is that the minute I choose to look at her house on Zillow, I am choosing to allow her to flaunt her things at me (as if this point, she does not have appreciably less or more than I do, but she needs this to be so.)

That is the feel of my sister, too. Whatever the monetary value, or even, as with the Rolex watch, whether she doesn't have one but would like one, the feeling is that she is superior to me by flaunting that she knows about Rolex (or whatever) and I don't. Or that she knows what my father needs when he is out of surgery is suckers, and I don't.

It's the feeling of it that is wrong and so hurtful.

I don't know how to think about it either, Copa.

I found this from Brene Brown. She talks about vulnerability and openness and empathy and shame, and about how we think around those issues. However our families feel, we are the powerful engines of our own lives. How we think about ourselves...that is where we break free of our FOO, I think.

Here it is, Copa and SWOT.

But, I still let myself be defined by her. I keep scratching my head, confused, asking why questions. Feeling guilty as if I am the bad one. The lesser one.

I think it might be that we want family. We know how we miss them, and we don't understand how it could be that they don't feel the same way. I have that dinner thing going on. That represents how I believe it should look. I have been not taking anything else seriously. I have been not believing what I have always felt rolling off my sister could be hatred.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

I'm going to listen to the tape as soon as I'm done with this post. But I wanted to clarify that I, at least, have stopped wanting THAT family to be my family. Heck, when I was a little girl I used to wish I was adopted because then I could find my real family and they'd love me. I remember laying in bed thinking about that while I bit my nails (I'm a nasty habit nail biter from my earliest memories. Bloody cuticles and all. Wonder why).

I already have a family now. I have my husband and my kids and my grandkids and THEY ARE ENOUGH. Nobody can take them from me and they love me and I love them.

You have peeps too. They are your family. Even if it is only one person or friends, if they love you and you love them THEY are your family.

Go back to your memories of your fake family sitting together pretending to like one another and to be nice. You were all playing in some sort of drama; a movie. None of it was real, if t here were strangers there that your FOO wanted to impress...maybe aunts or uncles who didn't know that their claws were currently in their paws. It was fake; a sham. We are lucky we got out. Lucky.

Although it is always cleansing for me to finally admit to at least somebody(s) that my entire FOO is full of it, not even knowing who they are some of them, let alone me, I feel so much better now that I have decided to never revisit them again. I'm glad I threw out those picture books. For me they were a trigger. I'm g lad I have not heard their triggering voices or gotten e-mails or letters or read their social media stuff...I am glad I decided to obliterate them from my life. I am so peaceful when they are not around, as I am right now. I can talk about what happened to me without feeling the horrible emotions I felt then. I think detaching, in our own ways, is mandatory for healing. And, Copa, YES YOU CAN HEAL!

In this book I'm just finishing by Peter Walker (I believe...book is on my Kindle Fire), he is talking about how he learned to gentle his memories of his abuse, which, of course, I feel was way worse than mine. Rather than hating his mother, he thinks of her as being unable to help herself from abusing him because she was mentally ill. He does not name her mental illness or call her a personality disorder. He just feels that forgiving and making it a different memory...changing his perspective...has helped him.

I have always wondered "why forgive?" I thought of it as a Christian concept. I don't understand forgiving without remorse on the other side. But after reading this, I decided to think the same way about my own mother. In reality, I'll bet she was feeling just like me as a child...a small little girl who was held up unfavorably to her obnoxious brother, who was the favorite without them even trying to hide it, just like my mother did. She did what she knew. She had no role model, no friends, nothing. She saw me and I looked just like her and she hated herself. If Ithink of it that way...her hating me because s he hated herself...I can feel a smidgen of compassion and a lot of apathy. I actually usually don't hate her most of the time. I just feel apathetic/negative about her but I feel she is learning lessons in her home, where she now resides. I can't quite do the concept of forgiveness without remorse on the other person's part, but I can gentle my memory so I can live a more gentle life. And I value my peace above of else.

I can think the same about the rest of my FOO. They are sick. Maybe they don't see it or even know it, but they are. Just like me...damaged goods...intimacy challenged...insecure. I dared to rock the illusion of their mother whom they chose to think was never abusive to any of us. That denial to me is a sickness. Since I have not seen/heard from or checked their social media they are not so real to me now and matter less and my feelings and emotions about them are less and are almost...gentling? Not because of who they are, but because I know I"ll never have to see t hem again. In this way, I can let them go and not care what they say or do or think. Yes, when my dad dies I will see them for the last time, but that doesn't mean I'm going to interact with them. My family, my REAL family, will be with me.

I am working on shame and self-talk these days. At work I broke a vase, which is not a big deal. I was working with glass and it happens and nobody gets mad. The tapes started rolling. "You stupid klutz..."

"NO!" I shut up my inner voice and said to me, "You will not talk to yourself t hat way. It was an accident and not important. You are a good person and you need to remember you are enough."

I got "you are enough" from either you Cedar or you Copa.

Thanks. I like it.

Ok, going to listen to the tape now and thanks for the share

 

[Copabanana]

Thank you SWOT for the book recommendation and Cedar for the video, which I watched.

Two years before my mother's final illness she was hospitalized with diverticulitis a non serious problem that affects more than half of people over 60. I have it.

Five days after my mother was hospitalized my sister finally sent me an email telling me of my mother's hospitalization. In the short email she told me that my mother was confused and unable to any longer care for herself in her home. My sister had arranged that my mother be transferred to a Rehab Hospital.

My Mother had an Advanced Care Directive. Should my mother become incapacitated any decision about her treatment had to be made jointly by her two daughters. Incapacity was a medical-legal concept that my sister had no ability to act upon absent a legal process.

Before she had advised me that my mother was ill my sister had waited until she had successfully convinced the physician that my mother lacked capacity to care for herself in her home, because of a spell of diverticulitis. And gotten my mother transferred to a Rehab hospital, without talking to my mother or me.

Only when it was a done deal did she send an email, which by accident I saw. I had been working out of town and in my work cannot easily access internet.

Let me restate this: my mother had not been told where she had been taken. She had lost control over and power over her life. Because my sister had decided to take it from her. Contrary to existing legal documents.

In the email there was a name of a Rehab Hospital which I called.

My Mother and I together tried to figure out what had happened. There was a social worker next to my Mom and I asked to speak to her.

I told her this: My mother has support. I would like to know what are the conditions and limitations of my mother preventing her discharge. I am available to care for her in her home and will take responsibility getting her to whatever outpatient care she needs.

My Mother has the capacity and the legal right to make her own decisions, absent legally viable determination to the contrary.

If she chooses to go home, please assist her in doing so or let me know what the barrier might be.

The social worker did not respond in any meaningful way except with mild arrogance or hostility.

I proceeded to explain to my mother what had happened to her, as best I could understand it, and to tell her that at any moment she could take control of her care.

I called my sister on her cell phone with my Colombo guise. I said I called Mama and spoke with the social worker. At the mention of those two words, social and worker she lost control.

She began to scream at me something like the following (with a voice dripping with hatred, contempt and derision.)

Sister: I will not let you ruin everything I worked so hard to put into place. *Screaming.

Me: L, you're not the only game in town *poor choice of phrasing because I was out of of town and she had taken advantage of the fact.

Sister: I am the only game in town Sisssster (said in a hate-filled and demeaning manner)...I will break you...if you get in the way.

The upshot is my mother called halt. Got herself out of the hospital within the next 24 hours and went to stay for 2 weeks with her boyfriend, and was fine.

My sister felt she had been betrayed by both my mother and me. To my sister, my mother had no right to get angry and to defy her control.

And I had no right to have a voice in anything to do with my mother, especially protecting her.

She did not contact my mother for a year. Until she wrote a letter to my mother, who was then 85, to tell her mother that she was toxic and that she had breast cancer and blamed her for it. She would forever sever contact with my mother and I because we were so deadly to her health and spirit.

In our part of the country real estate really took a dive in those years. My sister's million dollar house had gone down in value to maybe half of that, at most. She felt justified in restoring her coffers, I believed, by moving against my mother, and seizing her assets. Where I stood in this, mattered not at all.

In a way this was a blessing in disguise because it alerted me to what she could and would do and how we needed to be prepared to protect us. For when my mother truly could not take care of herself or make her own decisions.

A year and a half later my sister had secured a new job out of state where the cost of living was lower. She sold her home and a moving van paid for by the new employer would take her things to the new city and state.

Almost 2 years later I got another email from my sister declaring that my mother (she had begun to see and talk with her a year before) was no longer able to live independently in her home (again) and required assisted living. She's just not the same, she said to me. She doesn't remember anything. There was no mention of taking my Mom to the doctor or otherwise helping her stay in her home or helping her out, at all. She commenced to contact my mother's therapist and enlist his aid to force the situation.

I wrote back to my sister that I was in constant phone contact with my mother and that shortly I would go visit her to make my own assessment (I was again in a different city working....)

This enraged my sister again, because the delay, I guess, did not fit into her moving plans...with respect to my mother's furniture. Or, I guess, that I had an viewpoint or had spoken at all.

I visited my mother twice and indeed determined she needed help. But, the house was spotless. All bills were paid. But she was clearly, failing. I was buying food online and having it delivered, but having lost her appetite she only drank the Ensure. The food was untouched. I quit my job and went to stay with my mother so we could find out what was wrong and what was needed. It turned out that she had TB and was hospitalized immediately. She never again was to go home.

We were both terrified to call my sister but we knew we should. By that time my mother had changed her advance care directive naming me with sole care and financial powers. We were still frightened. Both of us.

Finally, about 4 days after my mother's hospitalization, I called my sister and told her my mom was in the hospital.

"Can you explain the delay in calling?" (She is an attorney, after all.) "Mama did not want me to call right away. With your new job she did not want to worry you." Silence.

Within a couple of days she arrived without letting either of us know, arriving at my mother's hospital bed with the protection of a friend.

My Mother told her this (I later found out): I do not want you to interfere in my treatment. I do not want you to take control or interfere. We, Copa and I, are arranging a stint in the Rehab Hospital. Please do not interfere with my treatment. And my sister told her she would not.

My mother called me to alert me that my sister had come.

M and I went to visit and while we were there my sister arrived, this time with her two girls. (I have previously written about that encounter. This was when my sister tried to stare down M and look his body up and down, I guess trying to intimidate and dehumanize him.)

M left the room. A female physician entered, conversed a bit, and left.

My sister got up and followed her. And began to speak to the doctor. And talked and talked. I could see her through the window in the door.

I began to get scared and not know what to do. I feared that my sister was trying again to take control of my mother's medical care according to her own ends. My mother from the bed could not see my sister talking to the doctor outside the door.

After maybe 6 minutes, I said, P is talking to the doctor. I think I should also listen in case I am missing something important.

One niece, the more sophisticated one, tried to cover for her mother: she said, Oh, she went to the bathroom.

I said No. She's been outside talking to the doctor. I think I should go and listen, because I am sure she is bringing up important points that I need to learn.

And then, my sister re-entered. My mother said to her: P, you promised me that you would not interfere with my doctors and my treatment. I ask you again, please do not get involved with my care.

And my sister became angry. She gathered up her two girls and she left the hospital.

That was the last time she ever saw or spoke with her mother.

My sister sees this entire episode as my fault. She accused me of forcing my mother to choose between her and I.

She saw my mother as having chosen for me, against her. That my mother had chosen me to take care of her. After my mother's death she wrote this to me in an email.

Actually, I think this is a lie, a cover story.

Because my sister had to have an excuse for not visiting or talking to her mother as she died. But there is a reality to it, too. My sister could not share one bit. She wanted everything or not one bit.

Not that she did not have that right. To completely ignore us. She had that right. It was her decision to make.

But my sister does not take responsibility. She blames.

I accuse myself of all kinds of things because I did not protect and so does my sister accuse me because I did not protect.

If I look at the above through this lens, I see the following. To my sister, my only role is to support her, in whatever she wants to do. My only role was to have stayed quiet and to have permitted her to do what she wanted.

She feels herself to have been betrayed by both her mother and her sister. My mother for protecting herself. I betrayed her by offering support to my Mother. My sister by my absence had had in her whole life free rein to access 100 per cent of what she wanted from my mother.

To her, I had zero percent entitlement, even if given such by legal documents.

She declared the situation to be as she saw it and wanted it. And when anybody said anything, she upset the table and ended the game. She learned this at my mother's knee.

When the sisters were hurt by the abuser, they were tumbled back into whatever protection we could offer because there was nowhere else to go.

Twenty years earlier there had been a similar circumstance when my mother had stolen our inheritance.

My sister called me to tell me, that my Mother had stolen our inheritance from both of us.

But there was no alliance here.I tried to scope out a course of action. Instead, she yelled at me, declaring there was nothing to be done.

She was an attorney, mind you.

I ended up getting an attorney and negotiating a payment for her and for myself. I was at a disadvantage because I did not have the will *my sister did, nor did I know how much money there was. (I know now that I could have obtained a copy of the will, as such are filed in the courts. I did not know that then and was not told by my attorney.)

But my sister knew that. I wonder now if my sister had made a deal with my mother and tried to cut me out.

Because the upshot is that she was angry at me. After she got the money she did not want to pay a part of the legal fees after the issue was settled and told me that I was abusing her by calling her, to even ask.

She had no gratitude that I had stepped forward and got something for her. She was angry at me, in fact.

So they hate themselves and us for that, too.

I still do not know if part of it is that my sister had attempted an end run. and wanted me to accept being cut out completely so that she could deal directly with my mother alone. Two parts of the pie, not three.

What does that say about me, and her contempt for me, that she feels I am such a fool as to have permitted this.

There are moments in life when one has to take a stand and fight, or else, one risks not being a person at all. And this was one of those moments for me. I did not fight my mother for money. I stepped up for myself. Because I would not have existed had I not.

In addition, they hate us as appropriate targets for the hatred they cannot feel for the mother.

Yes, Cedar. I think my story shows this.

they hate and detest us for the safety they needed when the mother betrayed them and abused them too, and they hate us for the safe harbor we did represent when the mother hated them, too.

There is no reason what so ever for my sister to hate me. The only reason I can think of is that I survived, without compromise, myself. I guess the other crime is not wanting much to do with my sister. Or for have seen her for who she was.

I think my sister felt free to express her hatred for my mother at the end, because she felt my mother was incapable at the end of doing anything to deprive her of what she wanted. And all she ever wanted was money and stuff.

My sister felt abused and betrayed by my mother at the end. And my mother felt tricked by my sister. My mother I think always thought that there was some loyalty there. My mother could not understand what happened to their alliance.

S, you tried to tell me when you were a girl that she was like this, and I didn't believe you.

Honestly, as I write this, I still do not know what hit me. It really is CPTSD. I mean, let me turn into a Valley Girl right here.

WTF, did I end up in a Mafia family or something? Am I some goldfish that got lost and ended up in a school of sharks? I do not have the language to understand, to conceive of where I ended up in my life.

Unless I am not seeing my part, which is uglier than the rest. And I am just not seeing it.

If I could do anything different, it would have been to trust my sister as being motivated to do the right thing for all of us. But where in my experience would that trust come from? I am still calling upon myself to try and see it from my sister's point of view.

But she hates me.

My sister sees me as having done horrible things. She accused me of stealing my mother's money, while I cared for my Mother. Without proof and despite an increase of assets during that time and a careful accounting of every (conservative and justified) expenditure. She tried to make me pay her for anything of my mother's stuff that I wanted, contrary to the will. She took advantage of my innocence and ignorance of hidden gifts made by my mother, that were to have been rectified.

Even after writing all of this out (sorry) I am scratching my head. What happened? How did this happen? Is it all my fault? Really.

It is really helpful to write this out, because I did not know that all of this self-doubt and self-accusation was still inside of me.

Even though I knew to be afraid of my sister, and even as I saw this unfold, I am still completely stunned by it. I cannot accept that I am part of something so ugly.

My sister sees me as the guilty party. She ardently believes it.

And I keep asking myself, if indeed, I am.

Was the correct response through this all, to stay away and let my sister do as she would with my Mother? Is my sister correct, that she deserved 100 percent of control over my mother's care? And her assets?

Am I wrong to think that my mother should have been respected and included in her care decisions to the extent she was able? And what about help?

Did I cause all of this because I suspected my sister or at least did not fully trust her? Is that why she is angry with me? Because I doubted her?

I am beginning to feel as SWOT does. That no good can come of looking any more at any of this. That really there is nothing to understand. Because how can you really understand something that you do not have the language to understand?

But I do not know another way to do this. Because I keep not getting better. And there is something that I need to learn and I do not know what.

 

[BusynMember]

I am beginning to feel as SWOT does. That no good can come of looking any more at any of this. That really there is nothing to understand. Because how can you really understand something that you do not have the language to understand?

I have to admit your sister is FAR worse than mine. Mine did nothing like yours did and there was no fight over caring for dying mother or the will (I doubt she'd even seen it). She truly did love my mother and believes I am the offensive one. If she were like your sister, I would have said "adios" long ago and been gone, a coping mechanism I learned to be able to do because my FOO played "I'm here today/gone tomorrow" with me from early adulthood. However, the things your sister did were way beyond anything that went on in our family, maybe because I believe that not much money was at stake. Perhaps it would have been uglier if a lot of money had been at stake. It's hard to predict since it wasn't. I would hope I wouldn't have sneakily tried to be included...and I can't see me doing it.

Your sister, Copa. Your sister. What a deranged piece of work (I am sorry if this is offensive...I aml just always so shocked when people just try to take power over dying relatives for t he money. It's sick in my opinion).

I can't see what you would ever have to say to her, Copa. And she's a lawyer? Scary. People put their legal lives/money in her hands. I would be afraid of her power and make sure she didn't know where I was or what I was doing. Please be careful.

The suburb I grew up in to me seemed to be consumed with love of money and material things. Everyone had to look richer than his/her neighbor. It was such a big turn off to me. I'd defiantly shop at stores that were unacceptable to the folks who lived there and by the time high school rolled around I was pretty and no longer getting picked on and I could wear whatever I dang near wanted and nobody said a thing. I had a dear friend, who I recently reconnected with, who taught me how to talk back to the bullies so that they didn't want to be around me and I promised myseslf nobody would ever bully me again. That never happened again at school, but it continued in my FOO, but I digress...

Since then I have sort of been the anti-rich. I can't tolerate people who put too much faith in how happy money can make us, because I don't think it can.

Copa, you are a much bigger person than your sister. I hope you take care of yourself regarding her. She wanted the entire pie and I'm so glad she didn't get it. the "why" here seems pretty simple. She.wanted.the.money.

 

[Copabanana]

I am just always so shocked when people just try to take power over dying relatives for t he money.

SWOT, I am so grateful to you for your response. I teared up. It is so validating and like in a sense I feel protected.

I mean, you are shocked too. Like it really is not understandable by somebody who is not like they are. It is like Cedar says, we try to understand them based upon our mindset and we are absolutely clueless.

But I keep trying to understand, and when I can't, I think it must be because I am the guilty one.

Even when Cedar spells it out for me, gives me a map, I still end up holding the bag.

I think really I need to go that final step, I forget what you called it, where you erase them completely, no Zillow, no Neighborhoodscout.com, no Urban Sophisticates. Nothing.

I mean not even trying to understand. Because I will never, ever understand.

M, too, is terrified of her, for me. Because he thinks she will come after me someday. After she has run through her money, she will come for what little I have, and attack me for it.

But I did protect my Mother, to the extent I was able. But not really.

How was it that my Mother had to be betrayed by my sister at the end? What is it that made my sister twist the knife, at the end, when she could? Why, then, when she could have at any point in the last 40 plus years, moved away from her. Honorably.

And there was no fight over caring for my mother. My sister never suggested that she would help her. She just wanted to get her out of the way to control what she had. Even though my mother continued competent throughout and after. My sister did not care whether she was or was not. Because the reality of anything never did matter. Just, I want it. It's mine. I will get it.

And the expectation that I would roll over to everything, where does that come from? When she knows or should know that I never did, and would never likely do so? Why has she persisted in assuming that I would be so compliant or passive or permissive? To anything she wants to do or to take? Is this really who I am? Does she think she weaves a magic spell whereby I freeze or am numbed and rendered completely unable to act? Like in a Fairy Tale?

Does she feel that she has the goods on me, some hidden power or means to extort?

Or is it that she has a fantasy of unlimited omnipotence? Or believes that because my mother acted in such a way, she can too? Without rebuke or consequence?

I really, really do not know. But I should.

Coming to think of everything as my fault is a child's response. Like what I wrote to you about your Mother, that you blamed yourself because it was the only way you could make sense of her behavior towards you. It was so scary to you that your mother could do that to you, you made it your fault so at least you would feel some control and order in your world.

If I was not such a bad little girl, she would not be doing this to me.

I think I have gone through my life feeling such.

If all of this happens around me, it must be my fault.

Even knowing it is not.

Thank you, SWOT. For bearing witness.

 

[BusynMember]

Copa, I call it oblivion. I don't just go no contact. I do oblivion, meaning I can't even cheat and look at their social media. It triggers me.

Copa, you did NOTHING wrong. NOTHING. Your sister is a leech, maybe antisocial, a scary person and you SHOULD listen to M. and guard yourself. Your sister loves NOTHING and NOBODY except money. How could her horrendous, coldhearted, soulless behavior be YOUR fault???

Honestly, after reading that I thanked my Higher Power that my sister is more harmlessly mean to me and is not a threat to my health, well being or money (not that I have much). But your sister almost makes me think mine isn't so bad...lol. I don't fear her. I just don't want to know her. Big difference.

Please stay safe and listen to M. Don't let her know anything about you, especially relating to money. I don't care how badly I think my mother treated me. It never crossed my mind to try to STEAL from her. This is big time crime and there is no wiggle room for your sister to charm her way out of it.

Moral people do not steal.

Not from anybody. Especially not from the weak and vulnerable, but not from anyone. Nobody.

Copa, I have come to care for you a lot in our postings. I'm sure Cedar does too. Please watch your back.

I'm going to give you a cyber-hug. I hope that's ok .

 

[Copabanana]

I have been thinking about how this woman in the news Rachel Dolezal reminds me of my sister, but could not put my finger on it.

She is the one who was President of Spokane NAACP who was exposed as white by her parents, while claiming to be Black.

The curious thing about her is that she insists she is Black and calls everybody else liars and is now saying that she may not be the child of her white parents because since it was a home birth, there were no medical personnel that can corroborate she is issue of her mother's body. So the more she is exposed the more she digs in.

And anyway, as far as she is concerned race is a social construction and she can claim to be whoever she wants to be.

And even that she sued Howard University for discriminating against her as a white woman, does not matter at all. If she says she is Black she is. And she is a better Black than anybody else. And sets herself up as such. In positions of authority, and power and legitimacy.

And she has set herself up, apparently, to judge others as sufficiently black or not enough black...or good enough to be black and still believes herself to be entitled to do so.

And she is the victim. Because she has decided she is.

So, I am thinking that OK, that sounds like my sister.

So her parents exposed her. And at first they seemed mean-spirited to do so.

But it turns out they were approached by the press, and straight out were asked.

And it turns out there is more to the story.

Apparently, Rachel had wanted to adopt her 16 year old Black adoptive brother so that he could leave the custody of the white parents. And her older white brother, 39, a professor, did not support her petition when she asked him to do so. And she had wanted his support, against the parents.

So Rachel, according to the family, turned against him and formed an alliance with an attachment disordered adoptive sibling, and denounced the older brother as having molested the adoptive sister repeatedly years ago.

And as a result he lost custody of his 1 year old child and is in court proceedings for child abuse charges. Which the parents say did not occur.

I am in no position what so ever to say one thing about Rachel Dolezal, whether her sister or her parents, her brother or she, is victim or perpetrator.

But, I am wondering why this all seems to so resemble my sister. And where I have heard a similar story.

And then I remember. My sister divorced her third husband, the one with all the money. But before she left him taking the children, she somehow suggested that his parents' home (*in a luxury community) be put in her and her husband's names. And because he must be a true idiot, he persuaded his parents to do so.

So with that, my sister was entitled not just to half of the community assets *to which she had brought nothing to the table, but to half of the value of her in laws' house, too.

And that was the beginning of my Mother's fear of my sister. But she could not really face the truth of it, and tried then to talk to my sister about it. And my sister ridiculed her, and told her "any time I want to I can take your house." And my mother was afraid.

What my sister had tried to convey to my mother is that if she wanted to take her house she could and she would. That she had not done so, yet, to my sister, was supposed to be reassuring.

I mean, is she so impaired that she did not see that her need to bully was so strong, that it overpowered her need to be self-protective and that she had in fact revealed her intention instead of denying it?

Greatly augmenting the marital assets to be divided by adding her in laws' home was not enough for my sister.

She did not want to share custody of the kids with her husband. So during the child custody evaluation she denounced her husband for child abuse, and she denounced him for throwing the dog against the wall, too. Repeatedly. It could all be true, except nobody had ever heard these stories before.

And she wanted me to help her write up the essay for the courts, and I did help her. Except I did mention to her that it might look questionable that she first brought up these allegations, during a custody evaluation, when she had secondary gain, rather than when she had left or before, and that she needed to address that in her account.

Because my sister had left the husband for another man. My Mother much later told me that secret, by accident. Right before she died she had become addled. Until then nobody kept a secret as well as did my Mother.

So my sister wanted to leave the marriage with as much power and control and money as she could get.

And she did not care one bit, how she did it. And she felt completely, completely entitled to do so. Without batting one eyelash. Not one.

So I figured out why Rachel Dolezal reminds of my sister. But sort of wish that the degree of their similarity had eluded me.

I am very seriously considering going "oblivion" with my sister.

I think we all have the picture. I mean, what more can I say after this?

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Heck, when I was a little girl I used to wish I was adopted because then I could find my real family and they'd love me. I remember laying in bed thinking about that while I bit my nails (I'm a nasty habit nail biter from my earliest memories. Bloody cuticles and all. Wonder why).

Oh, SWOT! Your poor hands. I feel badly. Please don't do that anymore, SWOT. If you could begin making the choice to treat your hands well, that would be a good, good beginning.

That just hurts me, right in my heart, to imagine your poor hands.

***

When I was older, I wished I was adopted. I don't remember thinking that when I was little. I knew friend's moms seemed kind and happy and so pretty in their eyes and in their faces and hands. I didn't want them to know how it was with me and my mother.

She had such hard hands when she hit. Kicked us, too. I m having a little of what that felt like. So hard, to be hit and kicked like that.

Her face was so ugly; I was scared all the time, and very lonely.

Like your mom too SWOT, mine would pull me out of bed, yelling and screaming in the middle of the night. Or, she would attack my brother and I would just go and stand there watching, and she would stop.

What an ugly story.

There comes a time, around twelve or so, when fear turns and changes and becomes a kind of distaste. Maybe the difference is that by that time, I knew I was not going to die. And I knew there was an ugliness there that did not happen in other families, maybe. When I was a very little girl, I did not know what was happening was different than what was happening to anyone else. I did not know that until eight or nine, when the difference between my mother and those of my friends was something I knew, and was ashamed of. My mother began to look and sound so unattractive when she would yell; patterns of abuse become recognizable and seem sneaky and cowardly and predictable and purposeless when we are around eleven. The style of the abuse changed; it became a matter of turning out our drawers or destroying our things, or of turning an electric burner on high and threatening to burn quickly as opposed to the other kinds of burnings that were threatened when we were physically too small to have stopped her lifting us bodily. The abuse when we were older became a matter of public humiliation and of invalidation.

My mother told me once that with as much time as I spent on my hair, it should look better than it did. She told me she was embarrassed to be seen with me in public, to have people know I was her daughter, when my skin began breaking out.

***

I wonder what people really thought of the live in housekeeper and nanny my mother had created of her own beautiful daughter. I was beautiful; I don't know what she thought about that. She told me to stop parading around about it because one day I would be fat and ugly. I believed it, too. I thought once I had babies, it was over. I am still pretty cute. So, that was a lie my mother told me, too. I don't know why I believe every word she says to this day. We ordered clothes from a catalog because we lived away from the city. I thought I was a size eleven. I wasn't, of course. I just believed I was fat, though I knew I was not. Even now, there is that kaleidescope feeling around whether I was fat.

I would roll the waists so the clothes fit.

How strange.

I think I was not fat. I have been this same size all of my life. I am not fat now, so I probably was neither fat nor ugly, then. I am not ugly now, so extrapolating back, I probably was not ugly then either.

How strange.

How proud she was, in that overbearing way, to display what she had done, that she had created a built in nanny and housekeeper out of me. Oh, how spotlessly clean it all was; dinner and breakfast always ready on time, as a matter of course.

I used to make sweet rolls in the morning for my father. I thought nothing of it. The kind you make with baking powder, not yeast.

An ugly story.

I still feel stupidly ashamed; still feel the difference in how I saw her once I was no longer a little girl. I don't usually think about it like this. Usually, I would just end that track, and we all could try together, again. It didn't seem to matter what had gone, before. But it does matter. Whether it was my mother or my mother and my sister together, things have never been
even acceptable with my FOO.

I am surprised to have these feelings.

And while I do believe my sister hates me and that this will never change, I don't condemn her for it. Of course she would want to separate from me and all I represent. Of course she would create family if she can, separating herself and her mom from the others.

I wish it had been different for us.

You would think that with all the posting I have been doing, that I would have put the pieces together before this morning.

Ours is an ugly story.

It could be that fitting my sister in made the difference. While it is true that strange things happened, it is also true that we had formed a relationship. Well, it looks like I just played a role there too, while she did whatever she wanted. There have been very big changes since my father's death. It is a strange thing, not to be wanted, not to be cherished. I woke up thinking about families that have that cherishing and acceptance between the sibs, and between all the members.

That is a kind and beautiful thing.

I am glad I can see it.

I will try to help that be the reality for my family.

As soon as everyone stops being addicted or slipping off the deep end, I mean.

That was a sort of a joke.

:O)

I am feeling better this morning than I have for some time.

***

I read yesterday that The Battered Child, the first book that addressed physical abuse, came onto the market in 1962. I remember a television show when I was still pretty little about a mom who hit with wire hangers. I thought about telling someone at school about my mom, but I did not. I was afraid to. What if they did not take us all out of there.

Then she would kill us.

That is what it seemed like to me.

I read about pathological hatred yesterday, too. That fit, for my sister. There was something in that article too about two types of personalities. One takes the blame, internalizing guilt and shame. One externalizes the hatred. That might be what you mean Copa, when you describe the power dynamic. It seems we are saying the same thing.

I wish these things had never happened, SWOT and Copa. Not to me, not to you or to my sister.

Still, it is better to know.

Now I can stop wondering why family never seems to work, for my family.

Very sad that this happened to us. Still, we do the best we know.

We did that. We all did that, and kept trying.

Good for us.

We are lucky we got out. Lucky.

That is so true, SWOT.

I can't quite do the concept of forgiveness without remorse on the other person's part, but I can gentle my memory so I can live a more gentle life. And I value my peace above of else.

I will do that too, SWOT.

I will read that book.

I really like that idea of gentling the memory.

They are so ugly; such ugly things to remember. Imagine it ~ there are people, most people in the world, who don't know these kinds of things. People whose memories are so different than the things we know.

What does that say about me, and her contempt for me, that she feels I am such a fool as to have permitted this.

I don't think they see us as real, as people, Copa. I think they do not cherish us ~ I mean, in that protective, joyful way it seems that we should be able to choose to do, as adults. For me, for my sister, I know now that she hates me and always has. I don't mean dislike. I mean envious hatred that is the only way she can see me. Given her behaviors over all the years, that is the only thing that makes sense. In a way, the role of pseudo-mom was taken by me. That is how I dealt with the ugliness. I patterned after those pretty moms my little girl friends had. Maybe that is what my sister is trying to create now, with her family and her mother. All the hatred focused on me so she can love her mom. Envy, because I continue not to be eradicated. That would explain alot of what I have seen.

SWOT is right. It will be best to stop believing.

But knowing that our personality types are those who internalize shame and hatred, we need to be wise and to be wary regarding how we think about the hurtful ways our FOO see and define us. We need to see the vested interest to them in trying to make us believe we are as they see us. that is what they want. Total agreement that we are nasty and worthless and less than. Whenever we feel that way, that emotional flashback way (I loved that description, SWOT), we need to recognize and set out to heal that woundedness in ourselves.

We can absolutely do that. It will be a simple thing, now that we understand the underlying dynamic at work even now, even right this minute, in our FOO.

Snip.

It isn't as though we haven't tried. That idea that I had to try has kept me hooked for the longest time.

***

My sister displays that same ownership quality regarding my mother that yours does, Copa. Think about what I have posted about my sister's rabid hatred of the man who wanted to marry my mother. It's not a rational thing, Copa and SWOT. My sister is willing to turn my mother out over this man, and threatens as much. That's the difference in families as dysfunctional as ours. Nothing is real; nothing matters but old woundings, and the potential for healing passes away.

We needed to wake up.

It is a cold, grey day in the land of my FOO today. But that's okay. That will pass, replaced by a kind of freedom, and by life lived comfortably within a realm of possibility we have never known. Think about all the times we were essentially kicked to the curb. Always, the cry was: why? Now, we know. Now, we say true things and the false "family" collapses.

We never had those things we believed were coming. We never did, not one time, ever.

We did try, sincerely. We don't have to do that anymore.

It will be a little bit lonely. But the thing is that we always were alone.

We always were.

Cedar

Monty Python's Holy Grail: "We already got one. Oh yes, it's very nice."

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I began to get scared and not know what to do. I feared that my sister was trying again to take control of my mother's medical care according to her own ends. My mother from the bed could not see my sister talking to the doctor outside the door.

After maybe 6 minutes, I said, L is talking to the doctor. I think I should also listen in case I am missing something important.

One niece, the more sophisticated one, tried to cover for her mother: she said, Oh, she went to the bathroom.

I said No. She's been outside talking to the doctor. I think I should go and listen, because I am sure she is bringing up important points that I should listen to.

She should never have excluded you in the first place, Copa. That is what she was doing. Intentionally excluding. I think your sister was glorying in a role where she could see herself as the one the mother needed. but at the same time, what she was actually after was to put the mother away.

I am thinking that for your sister, interacting with her actual mother was shocking. She seems to have convinced herself your mother was already powerless and foolish and helpless because that is what she wished were true. If she could just get her socked away somewhere, then your sister could pretend she did the right thing by her mother when what she was really trying to do was to get rid of her mother ~ in a way, to bury her before she was gone without looking bad to herself or anyone else for having done what she wanted to do with all her heart. Just as it is with my sister when her fantasy of self is confronted, all the hatred, envy we cannot begin to imagine ~ all the private things she really thinks about her sister and about her own mother, come exploding out.

We are not getting that about our sisters when they behave in these ways. We carry the guilt; we internalize the shame.

But Copa, you didn't do anything wrong. You defended your mother. She needed you to do that, Copa. The cost was high in one way, because you were still tied in to the idea (like I was, too) that the words these people speak have some relationship to the things that are true.

They don't, Copa.

Our sisters lie. They don't even have the integrity to question the ways they hate us to themselves, like we are always trying to figure out. Hatred would not fit the picture they have of themselves. That is why they hate us in secret and don't even know it. Because of that lack of integrity, every word seems fakey. When they say they love us, what they mean is: Bend over. Get out of my way. Be mentally ill or destroy yourself the way you look destroyed to me in my secret heart. Think of the way your sister looked at your face. Think of the way she looked at M. That was pure hatred, come of envy. Not that there is valid comparison or anything to be envious of. Simply that we exist. That is what it is. That is why these things don't make sense to us. That is what you mean, I think, when you wonder about the house on Zillow. You are thinking there is sense to be made of our situations. There can never be a healing between us Copa. It isn't your fault, or mine, or SWOT's. These are the woundings set up in all of us when we were only little girls.

Our sisters are doing the best they know for themselves.

We need to do the same.

We need to heal our guilt and shame. They do not belong to us, Copa.

I really like SWOT's concept of emotional flashback. That is exactly correct. That is what those terrible feelings are. But, as Brene Brown writes, we humans are hard wired for conflict from birth. Now that we know, we will heal. Just think, Copa and SWOT. We have never been healed in all of our lives. Just think how that is going to be, once we are truly ourselves for the first time since we were born into our terrible, twisted families.

SWOT is right again, when she posts that we are lucky to be away from them, at last.

Really, now that we know there is no way to heal all of us, that is the best choice for us. To be healthy and strong and whole and without guilt or shame.

I suppose we will heal now, by degrees.

How (something) are they who have not patience;
what would did ever heal, but by degrees.

That is Shakespeare.

There are moments in life when one has to take a stand and fight, or else, one risks not being a person at all.

Well, and that's what they want for us. Not to be a person, at all.

But without the chronic guilt and its attending shame, our sisters (or our mothers, in my case) will not fascinate us, anymore.

When we have acknowledged and healed internalized guilt and shame, we will not be vulnerable to them in any way. We will see.

That's the only difference, really.

We will see clearly for the first time.

Savaged dead and stolen blind.

Remember that line from the poem about the child I was?

That's us. Blind to them. Blind to the twistedness in all of it. Now, we will see.

Snip.

I was afraid of my sister and of my mother too, Copa. Remember how scared I was that she would call, or that they would appear at my door?

I must always have been afraid like that.

A flash of hatred for myself, there. And I recognize it now, and hold myself safely, and with great tenderness and compassion. Just the way I feel about SWOT's bitten fingers. That same kind of feeling. But I never felt that for myself, before. (Monty Python: "We already got one. Oh yes, it's very nice.)

:O)

We will all learn to do that, now that we have SWOT's term emotional flashback. Soon, cherishing and admiring ourselves, not for our courage or our strength, but simply because we are here and now and awake, will be automatic.

That is when we will know we are healing well.

WTF, did I end up in a Mafia family or something? Am I some goldfish that got lost and ended up in a school of sharks? I do not have the language to understand, to conceive of where I ended up in my life.

Unless I am not seeing my part, which is uglier than the rest. And I am just not seeing it.

Is this a flash of internalized guilt and shame, Copa? An emotional flashback? I feel that sense of shock too, when I tell myself the truth about my family of origin. And I remember posting "What kind of person thinks like this about her own mother, about her own sister?"

We do have CPTSD, Copa.

We are so lucky SWOT posted that name of what it is for us.

Together, we really are doing this impossible thing. Our families were lucky to have us, to have the gift of generous and kind in their midst. What they did with us was up to them. That is why they were so determined to destroy us, maybe.

We were so different than they are, and than they insist on being to this day.

If I could do anything different, it would have been to trust my sister as being motivated to do the right thing for all of us.

Copa, even I can see, just from the way you've described your sister, that she was not capable of doing anything but serving herself and using all of you to do it.

My sister is that way, too.

Blind, like me. Only where you and SWOT and I try to include, our sisters determinedly exclude and shame and take advantage of every kindness, of every offer of trust or relationship.

You did the honorable, decent, correct thing in standing up for your mother, Copa. It must have felt so scary, but you did it. You are a hero, Copa. Claim that. It is true.

Of course your sister hates you for standing up for your mother.

But she would have hated you just as much if you had not.

The choices, for us, are not between standing up or somehow having loving family. For us, there is no loving family, Copa. You even loved your mother with such heart and soul and passion when she was dying; you even did that, Copa.

That is who you are.

When there was nothing more to be gained, nothing more to be sucked out of the situation ~ not even the role of daughter so regretfully locking her mother away in a nursing home whether the mother needed that kind of help or not ~ your sister stormed off.

Your suffering, your regret at the way everything turned out, cannot change who she is, Copa.

But you can see the why of it now, and let go of the shame.

You did the right thing Copa.

You are an honorable woman.

That's all that really matters, in the end.

My sister sees me as having done horrible things. She accused me of stealing my mother's money, while I cared for my Mother. Without proof and despite an increase of assets during that time and a careful accounting of every (conservative and justified) expenditure. She tried to make me pay her for anything of my mother's stuff that I wanted, contrary to the will. She took advantage of my innocence and ignorance of hidden gifts made by my mother, that were to have been rectified.

Even after writing all of this out (sorry) I am scratching my head. What happened? How did this happen? Is it all my fault? Really.

It's like my story about beating my wife, Copa. Accusations are just words. I would expect your sister to do that to you. Your sense of integrity is something you cherish about yourself. That is where she attacked by accusation. "How long have you been beating your wife?" You are thrown into FOG, into emotional flashback by this accusation against your integrity, by this accusation against who you are, against how you measure yourself and make your way in the world. I have learned, as I have posted things I could hardly believe I knew the truth of myself, that when I am thrown into "emotional flashback" into FOG as I review these memories ~ I have learned that this feeling is the taste of my denial. Keep pushing, Copa. You know what is true. But when someone asks how long we have been beating our wives, we forget all about focusing in the issue at hand. "How could they think I have been beating my wife?!?"

They lie, Copa.

My sister lies. My mother tells lies.

And we automatically carry the shame of that for them. We say to ourselves they would not lie to us, because they love us.

They don't love us, Copa.

That makes me very sad, too.

That is why I kept posting that I did not get the win in what they were doing. I kept thinking they loved me. I kept accusing myself of poor communication or something. We need to stop doing that, Copa and SWOT.

It is exactly what it looks like.

An ugly, ugly story.

But we are so fortunate now, because we know the truth of it. Finally, we know the truth of it, and we can start respecting ourselves again for once.

Everything is going to be so different for all of us.

So incredibly different, and so beautiful.

But only in comparison to where we have lived, to how we have seen ourselves, all of our lives. Everyone we know? Has always lived in that kind of world where kindness to ourselves, and where trust in and respect for ourselves, is a given.

We won't have to always be proving ourselves anymore.

I can't imagine it, really.

Like Cartman says, on Southpark: "Sweeeet!"

:O)

And just think. Back in the beginning, my objective was not to love myself or respect myself. It was to be stronger enough; it was to deal with the fear. I felt so healed, but I had no idea. Remember all those posts about horrible things, and I could hardly believe myself?

That seems like what is happening to you too now, Copa. SWOT is ahead of us. We were telling the truth, as it turned out, Copa. So are you. It's just an unbelievable truth, so it's hard to believe it could be the actual truth of what happened and is still happening.

What a gift, that we have been able to see these things.

t is really helpful to write this out, because I did not know that all of this self-doubt and self-accusation was still inside of me.

Me, too.

And just think, Copa and SWOT. This is how we've seen ourselves all of our lives. It seems to me now that when I was safe from them, when I was far away from them and they didn't matter to me very much, that is when I accomplished all kinds of things. When they were back in the picture, things turned dark again. This is true. I never saw it that way before.

Even though I knew to be afraid of my sister, and even as I saw this unfold, I am still completely stunned by it. I cannot accept that I am part of something so ugly.

Me, too.

My sister sees me as the guilty party. She ardently believes it.

And I keep asking myself, if indeed, I am.

Of course she does. She would have to. She attributes all the bad things she thinks in her secret heart to you. Then she believes it. You are the bad one because you are thinking the thoughts she cannot claim are her thoughts regarding your mom or yourself.

That is how it looks to me where my sister is concerned.

That is why they can lie like they believe right in the face of the facts. Without witness, we gobble up the shame and guilt and beat the hell out of ourselves for our inadequacy or our meanness that we didn't know was there, or for our indecency in not having been kind enough or whatever it is that hits home and makes us guilty and ashamed.

Just like when we were little girls.

We keep trying to make sense of it. If we can somehow figure out where we went wrong, we believe we can fix this.

But we cannot fix blind hatred; we cannot fix willful envy.

I really do feel badly for us. We were so innocent and so trusting. WTF.

Was the correct response through this all, to stay away and let my sister do as she would with my Mother? Is my sister correct, that she deserved 100 percent of control over my mother's care? And her assets?

Am I wrong to think that my mother should have been respected and included in her care decisions to the extent she was able? And what about help?

Did I cause all of this because I suspected my sister or at least did not fully trust her? Is that why she is angry with me? Because I doubted her?

No. Your sister was in the process of victimizing your mother. You had stepped in to stop it once already. Your sister's hatred for you increased when you did that. She does not like to have her will thwarted. She tried again to take control of the mother.

Again you stopped it Copa.

When the chips are down Copa and SWOT, we stand up every time. Just as I stood up for my brother. Just as I could not excuse my sister's reprehensible behavior when my child was unable to defend herself.

We have trouble believing in and standing up for ourselves.

We do great when we stand up for others. We cannot stand for ourselves because we think we deserve what they do.

They lie, and they hate us and they fuel all that with envy. As we heal, their voices will come to be disregarded. It will be more difficult at first to claim the right to defend ourselves from shame and guilt.

But we all have done scarier things routinely.

We are going to be fine, just fine and dandy.

How long have you been beating your wife. Emotional flashback. FOG.

CPTSD.

M, too, is terrified of her, for me. Because he thinks she will come after me someday. After she has run through her money, she will come for what little I have, and attack me for it.

My D H says that. That they will come, and that I will be vulnerable, if he dies or we are divorced.

I see now what he meant. At first, and until say, two weeks ago, I did not see it.

M is right, Copa.

Our sisters will always hurt us if they can. They have like, this engine of hatred roaring away at the heart of them. No one in their lives is safe from them. I think no one in their lives is real to them.

Only they are real.

That is why they can lie so routinely, maybe.

They say people who are sociopaths have no problem telling lies at all.

I'm just saying. If the shoe fits, then maybe it belongs to my sister.

Oh, look. She and my mother wear the same size.

We need to stand up to that, Copa. SWOT already can do that, I think.

So, we will get there, too. It's just disorienting in the beginning.

Change is always that way. Little scary. But this time, we are the ones deciding where we are going.

So that's good, then.

Yay.

I think your sister sounds really scary, Copa. At least my sister is a tender little thing in some ways. But she isn't, really.

Kaleidescope. CPTSD. Emotional flashback. FOG, a little.

See what we have to go through to get free?

All those little triggers are everywhere in here.

My sister has done terrible things to people. She never, ever stops until they are broken. I need to get that she is not someone tender. That is a piece of how she manipulates me.

With cold eyes, filling with tears.

But she really has done some terrible, terrible things in her life.

But I keep trying to understand, and when I can't, I think it must be because I am the guilty one.

Even when Cedar spells it out for me, gives me a map, I still end up holding the bag.

That's okay, Copa. I still have a pretty big bag, too. It's beginning to smell like sewer though. Steaming bag of s***.

So, we're going to use it as fertilizer then, and make our own beautiful gardens where they will never be allowed heartspace ever again.

We have to be wise and wary and heartless where our little sisters are concerned. They will never stop, and they will never change, and we need to believe ourselves about that true thing.

But I did protect my Mother, to the extent I was able. But not really.

I think you did, Copa. And not only that, but you gave her the gift of witnessing her screams, and of hearing her and at the last, of loving her completely.

You are a good woman, Copa.

It is the situation that is so horrifically bad.

Horrifying.

What your sister did, who she is, boggles the mind.

Even my sister is not like your sister.

Your sister is like a demon on the cheap side. but really a demon, nonetheless. You don't really need to be afraid of her, Copa. She has been destroying every aspect of you she could access all of your lives together.

She probably will never stop.

SWOT is right. Protect yourself from her and turn away; even in your heart Copa, turn away.

I need to remember that for myself, too.

I sometimes am tempted to hate myself for the part I've played in my own destruction. But I am not hating myself for that stuff anymore. I really did believe we could do this. I am sorry we cannot.

But I am no going to beat myself up for their stupid sakes again, ever. And when I catch myself doing it, I am going to say: Emotional flashback.

That' the plan.

CPTSD.

FOG.

Then I am going to adjust my spectacles, and remind myself I can see clearly now.

And that what I thought I might have seen but that could not possibly be true, was absolutely the true thing that I did see.

Circling a little bit, here.

That's okay. At least we've set sail in our kayak with its strong, beautifully patterned paddles. One for us to use, and one, for a spare. Because they will surely try to come along and swamp us, those dirty rats.

I was just thinking about my mom and my sister laughing about "What would Cedar do?" Roar. That's disgusting.

Dirty rats.

Remember the link to Jack Webb being Sargent Joe Friday?

That goes here.

Dirty rats.

Because how can you really understand something that you do not have the language to understand?

That is where Monty Python comes in. "We already got one. Oh yes, it's very nice."

If I was not such a bad little girl, she would not be doing this to me.

I think I have gone through my life feeling such.

If all of this happens around me, it must be my fault.

That's exactly right, Copa. Those emotional flashback feelings are why we internalized the guilt and the shame; that is why we are ashamed and guilty when anything at all goes wrong in our worlds, today. That, I think, is what we are carrying for our sisters and they glory in it, in our carrying it so they don't even have to look at it.

Maybe that is why they hate us. If we are gone or discredited or otherwise destroyed, so is the truth of what happened to them. I always say to all of us. But I think my sister sees only what happened to her. And she probably even blames me for that.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I mean, is she so impaired that she did not see that her need to bully was so strong, that it overpowered her need to be self-protective and that she had in fact revealed her intention instead of denying it?

She believes her own omnipotence.

It is only when someone stands up to her (like you did) that anyone dares even disagree with her.

You have a set of stainless steel testicular appendages, Copa.

Kudos.

Right needs no defense. Just good witness. (That is a quote I don't want to go look up the author of now.)

And here we are, me and SWOT.

And that is all you ever needed and just look how fast and high and beautifully you are flying, Copa. Like a falcon, graceful and certain and focused and so beautifully, ethereally strong.

Because my sister had left the husband for another man. My Mother much later told me that secret, by accident. Right before she died she had become addled. Until then nobody kept a secret as well as did my Mother.

So my sister wanted to leave the marriage with as much power and control and money as she could get.

And she did not care one bit, how she did it. And she felt completely, completely entitled to do so. Without batting one eyelash. Not one.

So I figured out why Rachel Dolezal reminds of my sister. But sort of wish that the degree of their similarity had eluded me.

I am very seriously considering going "oblivion" with my sister.

I think we all have the picture. I mean, what more can I say after this?

My sister has that same way of seeing everything too. I did not think to compare her to Rachel but that is an accurate comparison.

Good one, Copa.

Very helpful to me, too.

It is hard to believe it, isn't it. But there it is, something totally unrelated to any of us...and we see our sisters more clearly than any of the thousands of words we have used to try to define what we see when we see our own little sisters.

Very helpful to me, Copa.

That's great. I am so pleased that you posted that for us here.

Thanks, Copa.

Cedar