I would assume the reverse. We own our own home, and have two dogs... and our dogs are NOT allowed to use the yard. We use back lanes and other public spaces. Don't even assume you can use the park, unless you have evidence of others doing so. Yes, it's tricky traveling with dogs - been there done that, and still choose to do it.
Hey, Cedar, or anyone interested in FOO (Family of Origin) issues. Cedar, WHY NOW???
- Thread starter BusynMember
- Start date
Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
This beginning part of the post was written yesterday. It was so dark I didn't want to post it. But this is what happened, next: After sifting through it for the texture of it, and after tasting and savoring and spitting out and vomiting up the taste of that emotional place having to do with what it feels like to love someone who is hurting us...I awakened this morning to the tune of "Kung Foo Fighting".
And all I have to say about that is that little kid in my karate class who was giving me rib chops? Is going to be dealing with a whole new grandma karate person in future.
:O)
I'm just kidding about that one. I think I will find a different karate class only for adults, though. I would like to take that whole idea seriously, now. It is about winning. Where my family is concerned, I mean. Not the little kid in my karate class.
And then, I found this. Family of origin stuff for me. It is a video of that song: "Can't Touch This".
Now, we are going back to what it felt like to have a look at my own heart, and the color of love. The videos and ect were added on second reading.
Here we go, then.
Interspersed with that (the color of love ~ the bruises and snaking black veins) were negative flashes from all the years; negative flashes of loss. Flashes of times when I stood up, when I risked, when I believed for the best and the responses were so wrong and I was left punch drunk, like Rocky with his eyes all swollen and his broken nose. And I started really getting it, how strong I have had to be, and how hard that has been. For you too, Copa and SWOT. All those punches we took; all those days that seemed so gray; all those nights we worried, or were alone with things we could never wrap our hearts around or see clearly enough to put away and so, we suffered.
We took the shame of it. But it was never our shame.
All those times when, once we made it through, we prided ourselves on our strength in surviving when what we needed, when what would have helped us, was to have been loved.
Something so simple; so easy a thing to do, to love someone.
And it came to me that I require love. That I require love to thrive. Not strength; not "I can do this."
Just like that, I see this, now. I require to be loved; along with that understanding came a changed perspective on all the times I have been condemned, instead. Those times should never have happened. In my life, I play with people who are out to hurt ~ people I call predators ~ because I sense the challenge in it and I try, every time, to prove my mother wrong.
What my mother did, what my father allowed, what my sibs continue to this day is evil, not wrong.
Evil.
Pathologic hatred evil; a choice.
There is no disproving it; there is no changing it.
I don't need to interact with anyone who is out to hurt me or whose purpose it is to play a game. I should not be manipulated. I should not be treated as my mother and sister have treated me; I should never have been treated that way, at all.
That first therapist does bear responsibility for what he did in his capacity as therapist taking my money to help me. Those were the parameters in that situation. I am the one who should have decided what I needed from him, and I should have named and condemned him rather than worried about the lust of vengeance and etc. That fear of my own vengeance response was classic abused child response. Hurt me, overpower and condemn me, and I will fear my own lust of vengeance.
That is a priceless thing, to know how that works.
I am angry now, about that therapist.
I am seeing from the other side.
Yay, me and you guys too. I imagine I would have carried that with me all my life, had I not been given the opportunity to return to it again and again, here with you two. Had I not witnessed SWOT's incredible growth with this therapist who is actively, knowledgeably, with competence and tenderness and determined intent, providing exactly what she needs to overcome everything that has happened to her.
That is what therapists are supposed to do.
If they do not do that, whether we have (apparently successfully) been manipulating them, then they are the wrong ones. Not us; not me. I note here that he did continue to take my money, even after that happened. I wish I had known better than to believe in him, and I wish I'd known better than to go back to him after that happened so I could figure out what I'd done that was wrong.
There was nothing personal to me in what he did to me. I was vulnerable. He was taking my money for a guarantee at least of safety and somewhere to figure out what happened so I could know what to do next and he couldn't even manage to do that.
Not so much a predator as a screwed up person himself. Screwed up people are not supposed to be doing therapy, or taking other people's money for services rendered when the services hurt them instead of helping them. When their daughters are in danger and their sons are about to fall, too.
Roar.
So from now on, I am going to stop liking everyone and believing they can do better and etc. They are who and where they are by choice.
If it reeks, if they reek, that is on them.
And somehow, this all has to do with my mother.
:O)
***
So, that is what I found, after intimate examination of the way it feels to love the people in my life.
And I came away from it with Kung Foo Fighter and beneath it, the theme song from Rocky in my head. Only I am toward the end of the Rocky imagery. There is a point at which Rocky moves easily and breathes well and is strong.
So, isn't that an interesting thing that happened to me.
Here is yesterday's post. The one about the way it feels to love kids like ours, or to have come from Families of Origin like ours. The other thing that happened yesterday is that the men came to put the dock in. One of the men has known me since I was a young girl. (D H really wanted this exact house when we found it though it is in the area where I grew up. My mother's house is something like twenty minutes away, on a different lake.)
And that was a very big mistake, when I agreed to move here for D H sake.
And the man asked about my mother, which is what everyone here does because the town is very small. In the past, in all of my life in fact, I have shriveled and blown away from myself when it comes to anything to do with my mother. I have been left trying to think of something to say when I am asked about my mother, or when someone has been talking with my mother and learns she is my mother and then, tells me they have talked to my mother. And that though they may have known her, they had no clue that she was my mother.
And she told them.
And I would feel dirtied by that.
And defenseless; and there was always that feeling of whore there.
And I know I should be a bigger person than to feel that way.
And I would die the death of the thousand cuts, because I would know my mother would make everything dirty and cheap and tawdry and wrong.
And she did try.
She did try, with all her heart. She tried with our neighbors and she tried with the ladies in my Book Club when I brought her there the time I came back early to be with her after my father's death. But the Book Club ladies were so excellent and they don't even know about my past or my mother. And she has never wanted to go there again, or even to attend when I host.
She says they are boring.
:O)
***
I see it differently, now.
I am so grateful to each of you.
Really, thank you from the bottom of my heart for witnessing for me, and for holding time for me, for checking and posting and listening and for caring about me.
Thank you so much.
***
Another thing I realized this morning ~ and this has been flirting around the edges of conscious thought for the past few days but I have not wanted to look at it so I just slipped into denial around everything to do with it ~ is that I have never liked my mom. I don't like to be around her. I don't remember a single time when spending time with her (or with she and my father, or with anyone in my family of origin, really) has been easy or enjoyable. It is stressful to be anywhere near them. I realize now that is an anxiety response and the difference this morning is knowing I have been correct, all along, in feeling as I do. I no longer feel guilty that I do not have that family I wanted and somehow, believed that since I didn't have it, I didn't deserve.
That is shame.
I resent the hours spent cleaning her house and feeding her children and etc. For heaven's sake, I was just a little kid myself; or that most special of all things, a young woman just coming into her awakening.
And I feel the same thing where my brothers are concerned. My mother destroyed everything she could in them too.
My sister.
Pathologic hatred. I get it that she was damaged, too. I also see though, this morning, that she has chosen that. Imagine anyone praying a circle of thorns around a young family when they actually believe, they and their religious cohorts, that they can make that happen.
Just imagine that; and that it was done to "bring me to the Lord."
Must be that same Lord she walks with to this day; the one who tells her every hate filled thing she does is permissible and even, desirable.
So I don't know how I feel about my sister.
I still see her, crying and so lost.
***
That they were capable of better, but refused me, chose against me, ridiculed and hurt me and that somehow, that was my shortcoming ~ those feelings are gone.
My own mother is still out to abuse; to shame and dominate and hurt not only me, but everyone else in her life, too. That was key in breaking free of it: she does that to everyone in her life. She did it to my father with great cruelty and intent. She does it to everyone.
I believe there is a pathological hatred involved in everything my sister does. I believe that, now. I see the evidence in every interaction and in the choice to see me as she does, as they all do and I realize now that this has so little to do with me, with who I am.
Sooo tired posted something a few days back on a thread in P.E. about having been whirled into brokenness through her daughter's abuse and naming her responsible and blaming.
And this morning, I could see that and apply it in my own life.
I had posted before that my vulnerability around the issues of my kids seemed to have keyed a predatory response in my ridiculous family of origin. I was correct. They did that and they do that and I am offended and ashamed of them.
I have never thought of them in that way. I have excused and tried harder and been kinder and it got me absolutely nowhere anyone could possibly want to be.
And I am so surprised.
And I realize I don't even like my family or origin. There is a sensation of distaste for them, now. That is what I used to carry, for me. And I am not so sure I even like my kids, anymore. If they loved me enough, this would not have happened. None of this would have happened.
So, that is an inside out change in my thinking, too.
If I did anything wrong enough in raising them to justify what they have done, I would have found and addressed it by now.
The difference this morning is that now, I know this true thing. I know I would have faced it and done my best to change things for all of us.
Turns out I am neither a coward nor a fraud, after all. But when you are named those terrible things, you believe.
***
Anyway, back to the men who were putting the dock in.
Yesterday, I was able to respond, to his question about my mother, almost without thinking about it, that my mother and I have something going on where we aren't talking to one another again. Like it was no big deal. And it didn't feel like a big deal. And that has never happened before.
***
Here is yesterday's post.
Copa, are you doing well?
I read on another thread that you are making concrete plans for changing lifestyle for a time. I like that for you, Copa.
It happens to me that after I have been in that FOG place, I get all involved with trying to make sense of our changed situation.
Guilt is a piece of this.
Loved tinged with regret is a piece of this. That feeling goes from bright, well-oxygenated pink to the deep, purplish color of a bruise. I realize that bruise is comprised of heart's blood; that is the color of the love I feel for my child, now.
Tinged, changed and colored by heart's blood.
Added this morning: And the color of my family is black threads of gangrene and rot and deadness.
Disbelief is a piece. Could it be true that manipulation is what passes between myself and my child now, masquerading as love?
Then...maybe I will choose not to love. Not my child, and not anyone else, either.
Cedar
So that was yesterday's posting.
A celebration, Copa!
WE DID IT, you two.
Cedar
And all I have to say about that is that little kid in my karate class who was giving me rib chops? Is going to be dealing with a whole new grandma karate person in future.
:O)
I'm just kidding about that one. I think I will find a different karate class only for adults, though. I would like to take that whole idea seriously, now. It is about winning. Where my family is concerned, I mean. Not the little kid in my karate class.
And then, I found this. Family of origin stuff for me. It is a video of that song: "Can't Touch This".
Now, we are going back to what it felt like to have a look at my own heart, and the color of love. The videos and ect were added on second reading.
Here we go, then.
Interspersed with that (the color of love ~ the bruises and snaking black veins) were negative flashes from all the years; negative flashes of loss. Flashes of times when I stood up, when I risked, when I believed for the best and the responses were so wrong and I was left punch drunk, like Rocky with his eyes all swollen and his broken nose. And I started really getting it, how strong I have had to be, and how hard that has been. For you too, Copa and SWOT. All those punches we took; all those days that seemed so gray; all those nights we worried, or were alone with things we could never wrap our hearts around or see clearly enough to put away and so, we suffered.
We took the shame of it. But it was never our shame.
All those times when, once we made it through, we prided ourselves on our strength in surviving when what we needed, when what would have helped us, was to have been loved.
Something so simple; so easy a thing to do, to love someone.
And it came to me that I require love. That I require love to thrive. Not strength; not "I can do this."
Just like that, I see this, now. I require to be loved; along with that understanding came a changed perspective on all the times I have been condemned, instead. Those times should never have happened. In my life, I play with people who are out to hurt ~ people I call predators ~ because I sense the challenge in it and I try, every time, to prove my mother wrong.
What my mother did, what my father allowed, what my sibs continue to this day is evil, not wrong.
Evil.
Pathologic hatred evil; a choice.
There is no disproving it; there is no changing it.
I don't need to interact with anyone who is out to hurt me or whose purpose it is to play a game. I should not be manipulated. I should not be treated as my mother and sister have treated me; I should never have been treated that way, at all.
That first therapist does bear responsibility for what he did in his capacity as therapist taking my money to help me. Those were the parameters in that situation. I am the one who should have decided what I needed from him, and I should have named and condemned him rather than worried about the lust of vengeance and etc. That fear of my own vengeance response was classic abused child response. Hurt me, overpower and condemn me, and I will fear my own lust of vengeance.
That is a priceless thing, to know how that works.
I am angry now, about that therapist.
I am seeing from the other side.
Yay, me and you guys too. I imagine I would have carried that with me all my life, had I not been given the opportunity to return to it again and again, here with you two. Had I not witnessed SWOT's incredible growth with this therapist who is actively, knowledgeably, with competence and tenderness and determined intent, providing exactly what she needs to overcome everything that has happened to her.
That is what therapists are supposed to do.
If they do not do that, whether we have (apparently successfully) been manipulating them, then they are the wrong ones. Not us; not me. I note here that he did continue to take my money, even after that happened. I wish I had known better than to believe in him, and I wish I'd known better than to go back to him after that happened so I could figure out what I'd done that was wrong.
There was nothing personal to me in what he did to me. I was vulnerable. He was taking my money for a guarantee at least of safety and somewhere to figure out what happened so I could know what to do next and he couldn't even manage to do that.
Not so much a predator as a screwed up person himself. Screwed up people are not supposed to be doing therapy, or taking other people's money for services rendered when the services hurt them instead of helping them. When their daughters are in danger and their sons are about to fall, too.
Roar.
So from now on, I am going to stop liking everyone and believing they can do better and etc. They are who and where they are by choice.
If it reeks, if they reek, that is on them.
And somehow, this all has to do with my mother.
:O)
***
So, that is what I found, after intimate examination of the way it feels to love the people in my life.
And I came away from it with Kung Foo Fighter and beneath it, the theme song from Rocky in my head. Only I am toward the end of the Rocky imagery. There is a point at which Rocky moves easily and breathes well and is strong.
So, isn't that an interesting thing that happened to me.
Here is yesterday's post. The one about the way it feels to love kids like ours, or to have come from Families of Origin like ours. The other thing that happened yesterday is that the men came to put the dock in. One of the men has known me since I was a young girl. (D H really wanted this exact house when we found it though it is in the area where I grew up. My mother's house is something like twenty minutes away, on a different lake.)
And that was a very big mistake, when I agreed to move here for D H sake.
And the man asked about my mother, which is what everyone here does because the town is very small. In the past, in all of my life in fact, I have shriveled and blown away from myself when it comes to anything to do with my mother. I have been left trying to think of something to say when I am asked about my mother, or when someone has been talking with my mother and learns she is my mother and then, tells me they have talked to my mother. And that though they may have known her, they had no clue that she was my mother.
And she told them.
And I would feel dirtied by that.
And defenseless; and there was always that feeling of whore there.
And I know I should be a bigger person than to feel that way.
And I would die the death of the thousand cuts, because I would know my mother would make everything dirty and cheap and tawdry and wrong.
And she did try.
She did try, with all her heart. She tried with our neighbors and she tried with the ladies in my Book Club when I brought her there the time I came back early to be with her after my father's death. But the Book Club ladies were so excellent and they don't even know about my past or my mother. And she has never wanted to go there again, or even to attend when I host.
She says they are boring.
:O)
***
I see it differently, now.
I am so grateful to each of you.
Really, thank you from the bottom of my heart for witnessing for me, and for holding time for me, for checking and posting and listening and for caring about me.
Thank you so much.
***
Another thing I realized this morning ~ and this has been flirting around the edges of conscious thought for the past few days but I have not wanted to look at it so I just slipped into denial around everything to do with it ~ is that I have never liked my mom. I don't like to be around her. I don't remember a single time when spending time with her (or with she and my father, or with anyone in my family of origin, really) has been easy or enjoyable. It is stressful to be anywhere near them. I realize now that is an anxiety response and the difference this morning is knowing I have been correct, all along, in feeling as I do. I no longer feel guilty that I do not have that family I wanted and somehow, believed that since I didn't have it, I didn't deserve.
That is shame.
I resent the hours spent cleaning her house and feeding her children and etc. For heaven's sake, I was just a little kid myself; or that most special of all things, a young woman just coming into her awakening.
And I feel the same thing where my brothers are concerned. My mother destroyed everything she could in them too.
My sister.
Pathologic hatred. I get it that she was damaged, too. I also see though, this morning, that she has chosen that. Imagine anyone praying a circle of thorns around a young family when they actually believe, they and their religious cohorts, that they can make that happen.
Just imagine that; and that it was done to "bring me to the Lord."
Must be that same Lord she walks with to this day; the one who tells her every hate filled thing she does is permissible and even, desirable.
So I don't know how I feel about my sister.
I still see her, crying and so lost.
***
That they were capable of better, but refused me, chose against me, ridiculed and hurt me and that somehow, that was my shortcoming ~ those feelings are gone.
My own mother is still out to abuse; to shame and dominate and hurt not only me, but everyone else in her life, too. That was key in breaking free of it: she does that to everyone in her life. She did it to my father with great cruelty and intent. She does it to everyone.
I believe there is a pathological hatred involved in everything my sister does. I believe that, now. I see the evidence in every interaction and in the choice to see me as she does, as they all do and I realize now that this has so little to do with me, with who I am.
Sooo tired posted something a few days back on a thread in P.E. about having been whirled into brokenness through her daughter's abuse and naming her responsible and blaming.
And this morning, I could see that and apply it in my own life.
I had posted before that my vulnerability around the issues of my kids seemed to have keyed a predatory response in my ridiculous family of origin. I was correct. They did that and they do that and I am offended and ashamed of them.
I have never thought of them in that way. I have excused and tried harder and been kinder and it got me absolutely nowhere anyone could possibly want to be.
And I am so surprised.
And I realize I don't even like my family or origin. There is a sensation of distaste for them, now. That is what I used to carry, for me. And I am not so sure I even like my kids, anymore. If they loved me enough, this would not have happened. None of this would have happened.
So, that is an inside out change in my thinking, too.
If I did anything wrong enough in raising them to justify what they have done, I would have found and addressed it by now.
The difference this morning is that now, I know this true thing. I know I would have faced it and done my best to change things for all of us.
Turns out I am neither a coward nor a fraud, after all. But when you are named those terrible things, you believe.
***
Anyway, back to the men who were putting the dock in.
Yesterday, I was able to respond, to his question about my mother, almost without thinking about it, that my mother and I have something going on where we aren't talking to one another again. Like it was no big deal. And it didn't feel like a big deal. And that has never happened before.
***
Here is yesterday's post.
Copa, are you doing well?
I read on another thread that you are making concrete plans for changing lifestyle for a time. I like that for you, Copa.
It happens to me that after I have been in that FOG place, I get all involved with trying to make sense of our changed situation.
Guilt is a piece of this.
Loved tinged with regret is a piece of this. That feeling goes from bright, well-oxygenated pink to the deep, purplish color of a bruise. I realize that bruise is comprised of heart's blood; that is the color of the love I feel for my child, now.
Tinged, changed and colored by heart's blood.
Added this morning: And the color of my family is black threads of gangrene and rot and deadness.
Disbelief is a piece. Could it be true that manipulation is what passes between myself and my child now, masquerading as love?
Then...maybe I will choose not to love. Not my child, and not anyone else, either.
Cedar
So that was yesterday's posting.
A celebration, Copa!
WE DID IT, you two.
Cedar
Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
Copa.
I am so proud and happy for you!
Defiantly proud, and defiantly happy. I love that you and M are moving and choosing change and creating this new thing. I love it that you are putting the dogs on a bathroom schedule. I just loved hearing that. It has to do with family feelings. Something to do with really getting it that we have everything we need and more, and that we can do and choose and take our lives anywhere we want to and never mistreat those we love, no matter how we have been mistreated, ourselves.
***
No more guilt; no grieving what is lost so deeply that we are not able to live fully and with great joy in this one, precious life. We all have people in our lives who have watched us suffer and stayed right there with us and cherished and became angry and frustrated and were hurt to their cores by our stupid families of origin...but they stayed, Copa and SWOT.
They stayed and they loved and cherished and they picked us and they stood up for us and they picked us up and dusted us off and listened to us cry and loved us anyway, every time.
Maybe, we are extraordinary people.
That could be true.
Maybe they are extraordinary people, as well. To have been able to stay with us through those storms of pathologic hatred our families of origin hose us down with ~ man. I was thinking Copa, of the way your sister treated M, looking him up and down like that. We needed Jabber to step in for us, right? "I wave my panties at your Auntie; now go away, or I will insult you again!"
However that Monty Python clip went.
:O)
Cedar
Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
I do that, Copa. I am a Hospice volunteer. I did a clinical in Hospice by choice as part of my training. I was too new a nurse, immediately after graduation, to have been able to stay steady state with all of my patients dying. But I continued to volunteer. I help families with the grief of it. We give them a safe place to explore what it means to lose someone we love ~ someone we cannot bear to lose.
I took the classes last year to begin Hospice volunteering again here, where we live in the summer. We have been leaving and returning and living elsewhere during the years after D H retired. I have not volunteered for those years. Last year, I decided to commit to volunteer work again.
I will be one of the volunteers the family can call on for the death watch. I've forgotten what that part of Hospice is called. That is what I will be doing. I have not contacted Hospice here yet. I will do that, soon.
Dying as a human being, fully aware and with time to cherish the days and the minutes and the families and to set our affairs in order is a beautiful gift, both to the one who is dying and to those they leave behind. It is a sweetness and a blessing to be there for them, to know how to help and to be present and to be aware, so aware, as all of it happens.
There is a memorial service twice yearly Copa, for those who have experienced a Hospice death within that year. The names are read aloud; candles are lit. Memories are reviewed, and love, and a sacred space is created and savored and we all come away changed.
If you were to call the Hospice where your mother died Copa, I am very sure they would allow you to participate in the memorial service they will do for those who have passed this year.
I have been one of the persons reading those names, Copa.
The ceremony of remembrance is healing in a way I can't begin to describe. There is closure in it, Copa. And there is love and acceptance and grief and gratitude and acknowledgement of our pain and confusion at what just is.
This is something for you in the future Copa, if you are not ready, now. Hospice specializes in complex grief. They are prepared to accept us where we are; to witness the pain and confusion and loss and to teach us how to walk through it.
To volunteer in Hospice has given me so much more than I have given.
Cedar
Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
One of the issues with vaccination has to do with the safety of the vaccines. It is inexcusable that those government entities responsible for the public safety allowed this situation to develop. Questions regarding the safety of the vaccines should have been addressed adequately and immediately. Instead, the possible connection with autism, and with other heath concerns, was denied. Mothers took their children's health into their own hands without adequate understanding of the risks, and refused to vaccinate.
Now, with so many children not protected, we are encouraged to believe it is the parents who have been irresponsible. The issue that should be addressed, as I see it, is proving or disproving the autism connection and correcting the issue of the preservative being used ~ and of addressing, truthfully and completely, any question or concern, however rudimentary, regarding vaccination. Instead, we are told to trust the very government entities who, though they are responsible for the public health, did not and do not address parents' questions adequately, thereby creating the unbelievable situation of parents afraid to vaccinate their children and having nowhere to learn the information they need to make a rational decision.
I cannot tell you how this upsets me ~ that a government entity whose function is the public safety has failed to perform even to minimal expectation (given that there are parents afraid to vaccinate because they have not been given adequate information to make that decision and so, err on the side of safety for their children today, deciding to worry about whatever illness might come when it happens). And yet, it is the parents who choose not to vaccinate who are being faulted instead of the government entity. The thing is, the only answer to this situation is for the government entity to address and correct the problem or the misinterpretation of facts regarding the safety of vaccination. Or to address and prove the safety and reliability of where the vaccine is manufactured. That, unbelievably enough, has also been a valid concern.
Or to address any and every question parents may have regarding the safety and efficacy of anything having to do with their children.
Instead, a law will be made requiring vaccination.
This is a soapbox issue for me.
It upsets me to see the public trust destroyed in these ways. It is happening around other issues, too. We are not being given adequate responses to our questions so that we can make our decisions based on knowledge, and not fear.
It is mind-boggling to understand that the larger and more officious bureaucracies become, the less responsive they are to those in whose names they were created. Laws will be passed or punishments enacted against those who refuse to participate. Information, answers to questions regarding safety and efficacy and purpose is what is required. Yet these issues are not being addressed adequately.
It is mind-boggling that this situation could exist.
Children will suffer as these diseases once thought eradicated again become commonplace.
***
There are states now (Oregon is one) where right to die laws are in effect. We will learn from their experiences regarding how the State responds to the costs of caring for the vulnerable and the elderly when this option exists as a legal alternative. There will be questions around the issue of assisted suicide for young people, too.
There is no way to know how to do this. The technology exists and so, we will be dealing with these questions whether we do it openly or not. Not to open another can of worms here, but abortion has been made legal. Like suicide, it was already happening. To have made it legal guaranteed that the procedure would be completed safely. It was decided that the woman has the right to decide what will happen to her own body.
In a way, this is the same discussion.
We have the right, and the responsibility, to decide how our lives will end for ourselves, too. Just as (so far, anyway) no one can decree that another person have an abortion, so will those same stringent requirements come into existence around medically assisted suicide.
Medically assisted suicide was the next logical step, and is a valid question whose ultimate answer has to do, as the question of legalized abortion does too, with the meaning and value of life. The question becomes whether life itself is sacred, or whether there is some other measure by which we will learn to judge our intrinsic value.
On the issue of death with dignity, I believe we can take a lesson from Hospice. There is a sacred, all-inclusive mystery here having to do with a life lived ~ however it was lived ~ and a passing away of that time. We need to incorporate that sacred knowledge of what it is to be alive into our living and into the completion of our living that is our dying.
It deeply disturbs me that we are not addressing these issues around the topic of abortion. That life too was sacred. In China during their cultural revolution, a woman could be made to abort her babies in the name of the common good.
Many things have been justified in the name of the common good. That is the crux of the issue, I think. How do we guarantee that these kinds of decisions can only be made by the individual directly affected. The descriptor for this issue, death with dignity, should be named correctly from the beginning for all of us: medically assisted suicide.
That way, we can keep a handle on who is deciding what, and just what it is they are deciding and for whom.
That term, death with dignity, should be changed, in our discussions I think. Just as Maya Angelou teaches, our words carry a terrible power.
So, though I am still not so clear on just how I think these subjects should be approached and handled, I am going to use my words to call death with dignity medically assisted suicide, so I can keep hold of what it is that is happening there.
Great discussion, Copa. I have a greater sense of clarity around these issues, now. Of course parents should vaccinate their children for the sakes of the children, and for all our sakes. But it is a true thing that parents are behaving responsibly based on what they know or can learn.
I do not understand why the government entities involved have not adequately addressed the issues of safety and efficacy.
One would think there could be a government website where parents could pose and receive speedy answers to every concern having to do with vaccination. The parents' questions would inform the medical professionals regarding which issues need clarification. Science is science. There is an answer. Yes, there is risk, and this is its percentage of chance, and this is what may happen to your child without vaccination. Or, there is no risk and here is the research validating our recommendation to vaccinate.
Cedar
Copabanana
Well-Known Member
I got mad at the Hospice, Cedar. First the admitting nurse would not believe me about my mother's weight loss. Somebody had made a mistake in noting a weight and it looked like my mother had lost 30 lbs in a month.
On the basis of that, she wanted to take a certain course of treatment. I dissented because I wanted that decisions be made on the basis of reality, not error.
Even after I found paperwork in a few minutes which proved my assertion about factual weight, she kept her domineering and superior attitude, saying to me: If you may not be ready for hospice.
I countered: You may not be ready for hospice. There is at least the need to respect your clients.
It turned out that in that visit I requested the most aggressive pain regimen, because I became convinced that my mother was dying and I wanted her to have the most comfort she could have.
I take responsibility very seriously. I was never so responsible and present as this time when my mother was dying. The decisions I made were, as if everything. I guess, because they were.
I never saw life as so precious until my mother's life waned and it was me who was the custodian.
Who will care for me?
There was no resistance to my mother's dying on my part, at that point. There was only the need to be "true."
Then another lady came, who seemed warm and sweet. A social worker. She promised "I will be back tomorrow at 3:30 pm."
She never showed. A nurse came, and I will forever be grateful to her. For a year I kept her phone number next to my phone. Jennifer. She sat with me until the mortuary transport came and helped us with M wash my mother's body which is a custom in my faith. She was here 5 hours or more. I love that woman.
But I kept in my head the lady who disrespected me, and the lady who made a promise which she did not keep. And never called.
And I held onto these things. And no matter how much I suffered, how bad I got, how much I needed help, I never one time trusted that hospice.
To be honest, this experience has soured me on all hospice.
I do not give second chances when I am this vulnerable. Anymore.
As I write this, I feel as if it is now, the pain of this time. Not everybody is you, Cedar.
Love, Copa
Copabanana
Well-Known Member
I agree that this is wrong, Cedar. The drug companies were given immunity by the government from lawsuits at some point in time. For expediency.
It was after one episode of crisis, and the drug companies were refusing any more to make vaccines. So, over the barrel the government agreed to idemnify, is that the word, the drug companies from any risk. They set aside a token fund, to compensate affected people.
With that, any financial incentive for the drug companies for safety and responsibility ended.
I know.
Me, too. My politics are on the far liberal part of the spectrum. But on the issue of abortion, I very much deviate. I was born at 6 mos. plus and spent 3 months in an incubator.
I could have been aborted.
As my Mother became ill, and lost functioning (we opted that she get a feeding tube, believing that she could recover), her life became more precious to me, and she wanted to live, still.
I became so aware, then, that life is precious no matter what, that there is no this or that function or this or that circumstance that permits another human being to pass judgment on which life is worthy or not.
I became very religious during that time, in the sense, I believed that only G-d, the divine decides life or death. Not a another human, acting as if G-d.
One is very, very alone in this circumstance, as you know. Had I known the power and responsibility beforehand that came with the decision to take sole responsibility for my mother, I think I might have been afraid to do it.
And now, the experience has cast a pall over my life. Before, I felt in late youth. After, I felt in early decline. That is what has to change.
Thank you, Cedar.
Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
I don't think you sound shallow, SWOT. You are stating a fact: Facts are in short supply these days. What a particular candidate does is considered more newsworthy than information on anything at all. Everyone has an opinion; no one presents facts. It's all about trying to elicit an emotional reaction. We have serious issues to consider and no facts to work with. Better to say nothing at all than to submit to taking whatever slim pickings of information there are out there today seriously. There are people in our countries and in our world who are taking matters into their own hands ~ raising money for wells for clean water, raising money for social causes, inventing new technologies, thinking up new ways to see things. But that is not what is presented for general consumption and that is a terrible thing. The claim is that television is skewed to the lowest common denominator. I have yet to speak to anyone who is able to learn anything worthwhile solely through television news.
Though I do love Book TV, and highly suggest it.
Barrack Obama's brother was on one day, and I thought that was so opportunistic that I wasn't going to watch it. He has written a wonderful book, as it turns out. Thoughtful, insightful, inspiring, even. I was glad I watched. The writers there come from every social spectrum and position. We can learn and consider any number of opposing viewpoints. Brian Greene was even on once, and the discussion was on cutting edge scientific development. There are writers on the brain and on race and on economics. Michio Kaku has been on Book TV.
I love it.
That is my favorite television ~ anything on Book TV. Especially if I think I don't agree. That has been the coolest part of it.
I used to love NPR, too. Now, they are into docu-dramas and telling us what was said, rather than providing the information we so sorely need to make rational decisions. (I do like Garrison, Science Friday, and that show about cars.)
Cedar
Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
It is terrible that happened to you, Copa.
The Hospice with which I was associated was one of the first Hospices begun in our city and even, one of the first separate, hospital affiliated Hospices begun. It was strongly influenced, from its inception, by Benedictine values and it grew and flourished from there. There is money to be made in Hospice, now. Back in the day when I was beginning with it, Hospice Care was a relatively new concept. After I had completed the training here last summer, my intention was to begin volunteering in Hospice down South. But the application for their Hospice was different; it left me feeling that it was not about comfort and dignity and sanctity so much as it was: one more volunteer = one less person to employ.
So I volunteered at the Gallery, instead.
Maybe that is what happened, Copa. That is a terrible thing to have happened to you.
Cedar
There are nurses who should not have become nurses, or who are working in the wrong parts of their professions.
Maybe it was too hard for that nurse to work Hospice. It can be a very hard thing, to begin thinking of death, to begin assessing for it in every face we see and yet, to love what we do and find meaning there.
I feel badly for you, Copa.
We are taught to step back, taught to support whatever it is the patient and family need. Some of us specialize in family dysfunction, even. Some, in patients in nursing homes, so angry and so alone; we heard from a volunteer who chose to specialize in that way. His task, as he sees it, is to assist the person to verbalize anger, to break through the wall of isolation and anger, if that is what seems to need to happen. He told us that at first, he would just go and sit there with the man. Eventually, he said: "This sucks, doesn't it."
And that was all it took.
And the volunteer was helping us too to understand that our task is just to listen, and to be present, and nothing more.
I do, Copa. I feel badly for you.
Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
Okay. But it's my imagery of my heart. I can bring it back; I can and I will, heal and bring those deadened parts back.
I feel compassion for myself, now. It feels like I am seeing,noticing, acknowledging and assessing my own wounds rather than trying to ignore and function around them, to function as though nothing were wrong, never once addressing that I am bleeding heart's blood.
Cedar
Copabanana
Well-Known Member
I was always intent in healing. And I began therapy at around 24 or the first time. My intention.
Eventually a co-worker who was a friend, an older woman, then about 59 or so, told me about her psychoanalysis. Because of it's intensity and duration, I decided that I would do this. Already at 27 I knew that I was different: afraid of relationships, men. Afraid to be attractive.Vulnerable Damaged.
The co-worker got a couple of names from her analyst. That this woman was several social classes above me, her husband was a professor of engineering, with money and resources that I did not have, did not one time enter my mind. I wanted to heal.
I chose a name and visited him first. He was the moment I saw him, what I had thought I wanted in a life. Assured. Warm. Intelligent. Successful. Handsome. Jewish.
Immediately, I had a positive transference, as they say. Nothing could have convinced me not to continue with him.
And at the same time, I was alerted to danger. He reminded me in some way I could not understand, of my father.
I felt more fear. Because I knew, already, I could not leave.
I went through the motions of seeing the analyst who was the other name. I told him of my misgivings about the other. At that time these men were friends. He is competent, he said.
Psychoanalysis is a strange phenomena. It is an immersion. Cedar, you have mentioned before of the dependency, need and want, that emerges when the session ends, and one must leave. Swallowing your feelings, making it to the car. Sitting there, until you can drive.
I went 4 days a week, paying him 60 percent of my gross salary. My first student loans I took out going to school at night, and used to pay him.
At the very beginning I cut out a newspaper article about therapists betraying their patients sexually. Who knows why. It would be many years before I faced memories of my own trauma with my father.
Perhaps, that therapist interpreted the article as a wish, I do not know. But I never did lay down on that analyst's couch. I would never turn my head away from watching him and what he did.
There were many things that happened along the way.
Had it not been for him, I would not have had the courage to separate from my family. And I would not have most likely gone back to school. Other things, too.
But he also hurt me too. Blaming me for my feelings. Blaming me when I became angry at him, that I was not better. Blaming me, is what I felt. Someday I might have the courage to say what happened.
But I always watched him. And I saw sexual stuff.
And there came a time when I realized and had to accept that I had sought to recover. Help to overcome horrible things that had happened to me. And I had landed in the hands of another abuser. Who I did not feel strong enough to leave. And I ate this. Something broke inside of me.
And nobody would ever believe me. I went to other psychoanalysts to consult. Nobody believed me. They all thought and said it was me.
The thing I want to say right here is this: When I finally adopted my son, maybe 14 years after I had began with this man, I was able to stop.
I kept in touch with him, and over the years saw him from time to time. The relationship with him had lasted longer than the time I had been at home with my parents. He had become a strange kind of family to me.
In the interim he had risen to royalty in the psychoanalytic community. He was the leader of the community in which I lived. And he was internationally recognized. How he thrived on his power and the esteem he was held. Self-satisfaction does not come close to what I came to see in him. I had known him now for 25 or 30 years.
I had a friend who had completed psychoanalytic training. A friend of long duration, about whom I have always been ambivalent. We went to lunch. This was during the time I was living in Latin America.
As our wine arrived at the table, she told me she had difficult news to share (she loved to share difficult news). This man had been accused as having affairs with at least one patient, while continuing to charge her and while continuing to treat her. For years.
And he was battling along with his allies to remain affiliated with the same institute that he had led.
He had renounced his medical license. And he would be dismissed as a member of this institute.
I am such a heroic woman, I think. I have so tried to overcome the damage and harm and betrayals that I have suffered. But I have not prevailed. I have failed.
I feel sadness for this person who I am who hoped so grandly, despite everything that had happened to her, and even as she tried to heal, was betrayed, again.
Cedar, thank you for having the courage to speak about your psychologist. However sad I am to write these words, I believe in some way it may be a good thing.
Thirty years I think it was. Youth to late middle age. The center of my life. And I was betrayed. By an impostor who betrayed everybody. But especially me.
But who was the betrayer? Was it not I, of myself? I knew. And when I saw the truth of it, I could not let myself leave.
I knew everything going in, on some level. And I did it anyway. And I could not leave, when I knew.
I am trying to figure out how to end a life such as I have had. What will give this all meaning?
I do not know.
That is what I am looking for. Something that I can sustain.
Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
But just look how courageously and beautifully you handled all of it, Copa. From standing up to your sister for your mother's sake to standing for your mother and yourself with the Hospice nurse.
To witnessing for your mother, Copa, when she screamed and screamed and no one would hear her and you did.
You did that impossible thing for her, Copa.
You have stood for your sister, too. In offering to send copies of the pics when she has never extended that same mercy to you Copa, you stood up and named yourself that beautiful name you are claiming and coming into now. It is probable that your sister is ashamed, Copa. Ashamed of who she is, and at being found out and exposed and refuted, where her plans for your mother were concerned.
In fact Copa, it is beginning to look like you changed everything for your mother as she approached and went into her death and her dying.
You even heard her, took her into your heart, while she screamed her anger and rage at what was, at the time and the things that were lost, Copa.
Good, good work.
You mentioned that the area where you will relocate has many elderly people. When we moved South, I felt ancient and broken, too. Now, though I am six or seven years older, I feel pretty darn cute most of the time. This has to do with cutting that nice, wide swath among the eighty year old crowd, who fall at my feet regularly and with wild abandon. Remember when I posted about that, and about D H responding that these were cardiac emergencies?
Well, here's the thing.
As long as they are falling at my feet? Who cares, right?
I will believe it is my extraordinary beauty, and will offer CPR on the side.
Now, that's efficiency.
:O)
Cedar
The rhythms of the Saturday Night Fever song "Staying Alive" are exactly correct for chest compressions.
A good thing to remember, on the off chance D H is right again, and cardiac resuscitation turns out to be the order of the day.
Ahem.
Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
No. You were not the betrayer. There comes a time we tell ourselves the cost is worth the leap. We give ourselves into the therapist's hands.
They know this Copa.
And we do not.
We leap. In our desperation, in our determination to have it and to heal it, we leap.
I remember making that decision with that first therapist. I discussed it with him. I knew I had decided to leap. I never in a million years understood that he was a jackass. He was not someone anyone would notice upon entering a room. He had his own practice, and there was bitterness there about those doctors ~ this was a holistic physician, remember, not even a bona fide therapist ~ affiliated with the Clinic.
There was a sign in his waiting room having to do with his freedom in practicing alone ~ that he could set his own schedule; that he could have coffee anytime or something similar.
Hello.
Now I would know to leave. Then, I knew I was determined to learn where I had gone wrong that these terrible things were happening with my child.
This therapist had been recommended by a friend for my daughter. She never would attend any sessions as she would attend nothing we set up for her in that time. But that is how I found him.
I am so grateful he did not work with her, other than that first appointment where D H and I were there with her, too.
Copa, I burn with indignation for you. To understand that we have chosen nakedly human, to know that we faced the shame of it down and spoke true, shaming things and the whole time, the jerks were not only taking our money but thinking who knows what dirty thoughts about us!
Good for you Copa, for your courage in trying and for your determination to heal. We are supposed to transfer whatever to the therapist. If the incompetent boob cannot even perform that one small function for us without thinking dirty thoughts ~ I don't even know what to say. But I do know that as I have begun talking about this, there are so many of us who have had similar things happen.
That's the thing.
Therapy is where we willfully make ourselves vulnerable to heal. While we are distracted trying to heal from these really crummy things that have happened to us, the freaking therapist is thinking dirty thoughts!
Roar.
Disgusting. A gentleman would never perform in such a fashion. Dirty little prying fingers therapists.
I will post my poem about him for you, Copa.
Cedar
Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
So, here is this, first. This is Monique Wittig
Seboulissa, mother goddess with one breast
eaten away by worms of sorrow and loss
see me, now....
Your severed daughter
laughing our names into echo
all the world shall remember.
Wittig
Copa, this is just one more thing to recover from. This is your journey of recovery. There is a book: The Jesus Incident by Frank Herbert. One of the main characters is a woman who is betrayed, casually and as a matter of course, by her male mentor. He has created The Scream Room. Everyone in the settlement must undergo the Scream Room. The ostensible reason is to validate loyalty and to assess psyches.
She has to go, too.
And after it is over, she runs the perimeter of the settlement naked.
This is very dangerous.
She does it to cleanse herself.
Then, she determines to find the tape of herself in The Scream Room. She has to know. She has to know what it is he now knows for herself. Then she will decide: death or life for herself.
She learns she has not tortured the other creatures there for that purpose, though she was tortured herself.
The other things, the sexual things, were nothing to her; nor should they be, to you.
Or to me.
I get to think whatever I want about this strange little man I am supposed to trust. He does not get to think those things about me. That is why he is the one who got money, and I am the one who had to pay money. Not only were we supposed to think unusual things, we were supposed to think all of it to find the place we were hurt, and to heal.
That was your job there, Copa.
You did your part. You behaved with integrity. You risked. You jumped ~ trusted him, against everything you knew to be true because you were paying the jerk and the money was supposed to keep it clean.
What kinds of slime balls were we working with here anyway, Copa?!?
Once you get on the other side of this, you will be sickened at the thought of conveying your opinion on the weather to that kind of person, let alone anything to do with your heart or your spirit, or with the sacred obligation he took on, promising to heal you, to help you.
Of course they would blame it on us.
That is what predators do.
Abusers and predators; that is what those half-human, half-evolved people do. Or maybe we are the ones not fully evolved. Somebody in our situations was a real walking disaster. I vote that it was my first therapist because no other therapist did that to me.
But then, I never trusted them enough to tell them everything, either.
***
Betrayal is the issue, here.
HIS betrayal; HIS lack of ethics and integrity and plain, human decency.
After that therapist, I never did see another therapist seriously and never, ever another male therapist seriously. But I would see a male for three times, to see what would happen. Just in case I was the guy responsible for whatever happened with that stupid first therapist. And one of those male therapists told me he would watch for symptoms in himself, and would send me to someone else if he found himself feeling that way.
That was a hard thing to do. To tell another male therapist the salient points about what had happened with that other therapist and risk that he would label me liar, or hysteric or whatever other labels these people like to slap around.
Anyway. I am gathering that poetry and will have it for you soon.
We are all about getting better here, and we are doing it.
I am happy for me to be seeing this all so differently. Again, it has taken something like twenty years of my life, watching and trying so hard not to be sexually manipulative or just plain manipulative or whatever manipulative he was talking about that would mean he was too sly to accept the compliments of someone like that.
Man, when you finally see it Copa, and you can't ever unsee it?
I wonder what the larger purpose here could be. There must be one. I will say that first therapist made a difference for me, such a difference, in the beginning. Until whatever happened there happened.
Oh, those freaking predators and the harm they do!
Okay. Poetry coming up.
Cedar
Seboulissa, mother goddess with one breast
eaten away by worms of sorrow and loss
see me, now....
Your severed daughter
laughing our names into echo
all the world shall remember.
Wittig
Copa, this is just one more thing to recover from. This is your journey of recovery. There is a book: The Jesus Incident by Frank Herbert. One of the main characters is a woman who is betrayed, casually and as a matter of course, by her male mentor. He has created The Scream Room. Everyone in the settlement must undergo the Scream Room. The ostensible reason is to validate loyalty and to assess psyches.
She has to go, too.
And after it is over, she runs the perimeter of the settlement naked.
This is very dangerous.
She does it to cleanse herself.
Then, she determines to find the tape of herself in The Scream Room. She has to know. She has to know what it is he now knows for herself. Then she will decide: death or life for herself.
She learns she has not tortured the other creatures there for that purpose, though she was tortured herself.
The other things, the sexual things, were nothing to her; nor should they be, to you.
Or to me.
I get to think whatever I want about this strange little man I am supposed to trust. He does not get to think those things about me. That is why he is the one who got money, and I am the one who had to pay money. Not only were we supposed to think unusual things, we were supposed to think all of it to find the place we were hurt, and to heal.
That was your job there, Copa.
You did your part. You behaved with integrity. You risked. You jumped ~ trusted him, against everything you knew to be true because you were paying the jerk and the money was supposed to keep it clean.
What kinds of slime balls were we working with here anyway, Copa?!?
Once you get on the other side of this, you will be sickened at the thought of conveying your opinion on the weather to that kind of person, let alone anything to do with your heart or your spirit, or with the sacred obligation he took on, promising to heal you, to help you.
Of course they would blame it on us.
That is what predators do.
Abusers and predators; that is what those half-human, half-evolved people do. Or maybe we are the ones not fully evolved. Somebody in our situations was a real walking disaster. I vote that it was my first therapist because no other therapist did that to me.
But then, I never trusted them enough to tell them everything, either.
***
Betrayal is the issue, here.
HIS betrayal; HIS lack of ethics and integrity and plain, human decency.
After that therapist, I never did see another therapist seriously and never, ever another male therapist seriously. But I would see a male for three times, to see what would happen. Just in case I was the guy responsible for whatever happened with that stupid first therapist. And one of those male therapists told me he would watch for symptoms in himself, and would send me to someone else if he found himself feeling that way.
That was a hard thing to do. To tell another male therapist the salient points about what had happened with that other therapist and risk that he would label me liar, or hysteric or whatever other labels these people like to slap around.
Anyway. I am gathering that poetry and will have it for you soon.
We are all about getting better here, and we are doing it.
I am happy for me to be seeing this all so differently. Again, it has taken something like twenty years of my life, watching and trying so hard not to be sexually manipulative or just plain manipulative or whatever manipulative he was talking about that would mean he was too sly to accept the compliments of someone like that.
Man, when you finally see it Copa, and you can't ever unsee it?
I wonder what the larger purpose here could be. There must be one. I will say that first therapist made a difference for me, such a difference, in the beginning. Until whatever happened there happened.
Oh, those freaking predators and the harm they do!
Okay. Poetry coming up.
Cedar
Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
Okay. This is the poem written regarding trusting, leaping, deciding to do this thing. The first line is the title of a book by Taylor Caldwell: Dear and Glorious Physician. It is about the disciple, Luke.
Dear and glorious physician
magician known and trusted well
Keeper of sacred, sweet and secret Fire ~
safe harbor for the writhing soul
set sail the haunted bowels of Hell
Graduate
of (his mother's name) School of Higher Learning
The first Magna Cum Laude
who never made the grade.
Yet learned that magic
spoke by Merlin, Luke, and Galen
Listened, dear and glorious physician
as the symphony was played
Honesty...integrity
stars by which a curious, lone and mortal man
navigates the dark
Deep within...the music plays you
rhythmic metronomes of honor and
compassion
Chosen weapons of the white magician ~
composing, with the surgeon's skill
mystic runes against the dark
So...we come
Impoverished children
enchanted in a black and blasted land ~
misers, hoarding deadly truths too poisonous to tell
Come, in quest of alchemistic gold
to bless the hoary palm of Charon and sail free
the gates of Hell
And you teach us, dear magician
the soaring power of the White
Teach, with unassuming comfort
lovingkindness for that which...cries alone
and worships, in the night
Teach the truth within us
and guide us safely, to the Light
You know, Copa and SWOT, I really did like him so much, in the beginning. I still like him, I suppose. I wish things could have been different, and I don't know what happened, there.
Nonetheless. He was taking my money so he is the guy who was supposed to know how to do this.
But I really did like him so much, in the beginning.
He received each of these poems, as they were written.
Maybe that is what he meant, when he said I was a manipulator and he would never trust the compliments of someone like that. Because of the poetry, I mean.
That could be.
You would think he would have just said that, then.
Okay. So I am still a little confused about all this.
Whatever. He was the guy taking the money. I was the guy paying the money and he wasn't supposed to hurt me without my knowing why. How else could I learn to not do whatever it was.
Little confusion there, still.
Dear and glorious physician
magician known and trusted well
Keeper of sacred, sweet and secret Fire ~
safe harbor for the writhing soul
set sail the haunted bowels of Hell
Graduate
of (his mother's name) School of Higher Learning
The first Magna Cum Laude
who never made the grade.
Yet learned that magic
spoke by Merlin, Luke, and Galen
Listened, dear and glorious physician
as the symphony was played
Honesty...integrity
stars by which a curious, lone and mortal man
navigates the dark
Deep within...the music plays you
rhythmic metronomes of honor and
compassion
Chosen weapons of the white magician ~
composing, with the surgeon's skill
mystic runes against the dark
So...we come
Impoverished children
enchanted in a black and blasted land ~
misers, hoarding deadly truths too poisonous to tell
Come, in quest of alchemistic gold
to bless the hoary palm of Charon and sail free
the gates of Hell
And you teach us, dear magician
the soaring power of the White
Teach, with unassuming comfort
lovingkindness for that which...cries alone
and worships, in the night
Teach the truth within us
and guide us safely, to the Light
You know, Copa and SWOT, I really did like him so much, in the beginning. I still like him, I suppose. I wish things could have been different, and I don't know what happened, there.
Nonetheless. He was taking my money so he is the guy who was supposed to know how to do this.
But I really did like him so much, in the beginning.
He received each of these poems, as they were written.
Maybe that is what he meant, when he said I was a manipulator and he would never trust the compliments of someone like that. Because of the poetry, I mean.
That could be.
You would think he would have just said that, then.
Okay. So I am still a little confused about all this.
Whatever. He was the guy taking the money. I was the guy paying the money and he wasn't supposed to hurt me without my knowing why. How else could I learn to not do whatever it was.
Little confusion there, still.
Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
Okay. This one is where the sexual part comes in. Those kinds of feelings, I mean.
Three days and two
...nights
To relearn the white magician
Learn him
fancy, fine and free ~
("Wha'ssat he be cookin' up
out dere in dat kitchen?!?)
While I lounge around
in a negligent gown
that changes from muslin to velvet and back
Imagine him, laughing
imagine ~ a frown
Ah, he knows, then ~
magic shouldn't be played with
like that
Ah but I needed that game
dear magician
Needed to fly
(why else have wings?)
and return to the hand
Jesses discarded
the falconer known....
In the tentative quiet
dawn colors the land.
Three days and two
...nights
To relearn the white magician
Learn him
fancy, fine and free ~
("Wha'ssat he be cookin' up
out dere in dat kitchen?!?)
While I lounge around
in a negligent gown
that changes from muslin to velvet and back
Imagine him, laughing
imagine ~ a frown
Ah, he knows, then ~
magic shouldn't be played with
like that
Ah but I needed that game
dear magician
Needed to fly
(why else have wings?)
and return to the hand
Jesses discarded
the falconer known....
In the tentative quiet
dawn colors the land.
BusynMember
Well-Known Member
Therapy was so different for me.
I didn't do psychoanalysis. I thought it was garbage, frankly. I experienced no transference with anyone I saw. I mostly dabbled in cognitive behavioral therapy type psychologists. I wouldn't get better from sitting and pouring my heart out...I want coping skills. Dialectal Behavioral Therapy is like that too, only more advanced. Mentalization sounds interesting to and I'm willing to do EMDR to get rid of the traumitic thoughts.
I think Freud was wrong. 100% wrong. But at least he humanized people who suffer things like depression and bipolar and even schizophrenia.
I have shared a lot with a few female therapists through the years, but they are also coping-skill oriented, although they are very good at listening and validating and bringing up good points too. I saw one therapist for ten years, until she retired.
I am not going to, nor have I ever, laid on a couch to free associate.
I want to learn from the psychologist...I want to be taught skills to help me in my daily life and to help me deal with triggers that come up through the years, which happened with Thing 2. I am hoping EMDR will take the traumatic thoughts away, which it is supposed to do. You still acknowledge what happened, but you are no longer horrified by them as if they happened today; now. That is what I hate. The thought of my sister gives me the creeps NOW as if she is hanging up on me for the first time NOW or the cops are at my door NOW because I tried to find out why she was angry. I also have a severe traumatic fear of getting a new job due to my horrible experiences with being fired so much. It is a fact that I have learning problems and neurological differences and my bosses were not sympathetic that it took me a long time to connect t he dots. In fact the job trauma may be worse than Sister's rejection. I'm sure mother's words and rejection are my biggest trauma.
But I don't like Freud based therapy. I never did. What we are doing here, I never really did with a therapist. We worked on moving on in a better direction. That doesn't mean the shrinks didn't know my history. I told them. They demanded it. It's just that I liked focusing on helping myself more.
I didn't do psychoanalysis. I thought it was garbage, frankly. I experienced no transference with anyone I saw. I mostly dabbled in cognitive behavioral therapy type psychologists. I wouldn't get better from sitting and pouring my heart out...I want coping skills. Dialectal Behavioral Therapy is like that too, only more advanced. Mentalization sounds interesting to and I'm willing to do EMDR to get rid of the traumitic thoughts.
I think Freud was wrong. 100% wrong. But at least he humanized people who suffer things like depression and bipolar and even schizophrenia.
I have shared a lot with a few female therapists through the years, but they are also coping-skill oriented, although they are very good at listening and validating and bringing up good points too. I saw one therapist for ten years, until she retired.
I am not going to, nor have I ever, laid on a couch to free associate.
I want to learn from the psychologist...I want to be taught skills to help me in my daily life and to help me deal with triggers that come up through the years, which happened with Thing 2. I am hoping EMDR will take the traumatic thoughts away, which it is supposed to do. You still acknowledge what happened, but you are no longer horrified by them as if they happened today; now. That is what I hate. The thought of my sister gives me the creeps NOW as if she is hanging up on me for the first time NOW or the cops are at my door NOW because I tried to find out why she was angry. I also have a severe traumatic fear of getting a new job due to my horrible experiences with being fired so much. It is a fact that I have learning problems and neurological differences and my bosses were not sympathetic that it took me a long time to connect t he dots. In fact the job trauma may be worse than Sister's rejection. I'm sure mother's words and rejection are my biggest trauma.
But I don't like Freud based therapy. I never did. What we are doing here, I never really did with a therapist. We worked on moving on in a better direction. That doesn't mean the shrinks didn't know my history. I told them. They demanded it. It's just that I liked focusing on helping myself more.
Copabanana
Well-Known Member
They do it for the worship and the power they feel.
I thought I had sent what follows, but I guess, have not.
It is interesting now to see this, in relation to your poetry, Cedar. It calls into question, the whole thing about what a relationship is and can be. Do I judge M against this dream, this magic and the betrayal of responsibility about which you so eloquently write? Was everything I would do and did a reaction to what had preceded?
Is our real life brokenness? And rebuilding, in defiance of what came before?
Did I choose, or accept M, because of the reality of his naked need and vulnerability, not in spite of it? Because it was real...
Because the fantasy is only that. Or worse.
M feels so broken, Cedar. His mother leaves July 7th and there is not one thing he can do to protect her. Her husband keeps her imprisoned in the house and beats her still. What is she returning to he asks? It is not a life.
I told him today that he could go with her. This would mean that he could not come back. It could be the end of our relationship, although he would want me to go with him. I doubt I would follow him out of the country, but I might.
That is what we had talked about in the first years of our relationship, that we would go together to Argentina and make a life there.
What I wanted to say in this message is this. Everything you have written about your husband shows his strength, that he keeps standing and going forward no matter what. And that he protects you and that you feel protected.
M has something broken in him.
When he was 12 his father stomped on him and kicked him with his boots, after M tried to protect his mother from more beatings. His father threw him out, and he and his brother roamed Mexico for years.
He keeps something of himself guarded, always, ready to leave, if he needs to. After a period of prolonged conflict he left his family, wife, job, investments, money, everything. 11 years ago. He had tried to build in his family, what he had lacked. His sister has told me everything was for his family. Everything he worked for was for them.
He said last night. I have not left you, yet.
I guess what I am saying is that your husband seems as if he is a constant who protects you, gives you a base of security, and certainty. Kind of like the wedding cake, on which you can be the ballerina.
With M, I do not know I have the same. And yet I get back to over and over again, that I do not want to leave him. However precarious it is. I do not want to leave him. He is the most security that I have ever known, in another person.
The thing is I realize as I type this is that M is not corruptible. He does the right thing as best as he is able. And more. I could have never helped my mother without his guidance and support. And he is with me every step of the way with my son.
He is with me. But he is broken, too. And the obstacles against him are everywhere. So, I cannot be the ballerina on the cake, with M.
I have to be strong. So, I guess if not the ballerina, I need to be something, someone else. I could say here, I have not left him, yet.
Scent of Cedar *
Well-Known Member
A...game, of black and of white mitered bishops
played on a board universally black
The white Child steps forward...
Fire, in her eyes and the Wind
'neath her wings
the white Child steps forward ~
Never
looks back
***
Shunned
as it was written
When that which was to be was yet
concealed
but for the rhyme
Labeled...false; and labeled
Liar
The criminal
newly wakened
Wonder
at its crime....
Threatened
should she rise, or fall
Condemned
that she should move, at all
Accused and
ostracized and
...small
A blind and savaged Child recall
its first and bloodied tears
Metallic
copper colored fears....
Recall shattered reflections
insane turnings and twistings
White candles
in an innocent's mirror
Truths
teethed on a razor's nicked and crazied edge
Ere that which hold safe then
betray her, appear
Thunderous warning
ere that which was written...
come clear
Recall ~ scene within a falcon's eye
and echoed in its prescient cry
All...
all was known
ere the falcon did fly
Recall an innocent's wonder
at the gift of a magical sword
Ere dawning, crystalline...vision
color, the sky
Christened...Truth
and named Courage, to wield it
Honor ~ gifted of the magician
ere he betray, and declare her
a lie
Recall...
all was known
Recall her belief was in that which once held, safe
recall betrayal ~ call again, the hellish taste of that Fire
Shamed
recall learning her Name, there...
Shamed
recall that which held safe named her ~
Liar
A...game, of black and of white mitered bishops
played on a board, universally black
The white Child steps forward ~
Fire, in her eyes and the Wind
'neath her wings
The white Child steps forward;
never
looks back
played on a board universally black
The white Child steps forward...
Fire, in her eyes and the Wind
'neath her wings
the white Child steps forward ~
Never
looks back
***
Shunned
as it was written
When that which was to be was yet
concealed
but for the rhyme
Labeled...false; and labeled
Liar
The criminal
newly wakened
Wonder
at its crime....
Threatened
should she rise, or fall
Condemned
that she should move, at all
Accused and
ostracized and
...small
A blind and savaged Child recall
its first and bloodied tears
Metallic
copper colored fears....
Recall shattered reflections
insane turnings and twistings
White candles
in an innocent's mirror
Truths
teethed on a razor's nicked and crazied edge
Ere that which hold safe then
betray her, appear
Thunderous warning
ere that which was written...
come clear
Recall ~ scene within a falcon's eye
and echoed in its prescient cry
All...
all was known
ere the falcon did fly
Recall an innocent's wonder
at the gift of a magical sword
Ere dawning, crystalline...vision
color, the sky
Christened...Truth
and named Courage, to wield it
Honor ~ gifted of the magician
ere he betray, and declare her
a lie
Recall...
all was known
Recall her belief was in that which once held, safe
recall betrayal ~ call again, the hellish taste of that Fire
Shamed
recall learning her Name, there...
Shamed
recall that which held safe named her ~
Liar
A...game, of black and of white mitered bishops
played on a board, universally black
The white Child steps forward ~
Fire, in her eyes and the Wind
'neath her wings
The white Child steps forward;
never
looks back
BusynMember
Well-Known Member
Beautiful poem.
