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

[Scent of Cedar *]

Soon M began to be hostile. He saw her behavior as volitional. He saw her choosing to treat me so.

D H saw these things with my mother, and with how strangely my entire family of origin interacted when they were with one another, long before I did. I had the memories of the things I share here, but it was as though those things had happened to someone else. If I began thinking of those incidents, even in a casual way, I would wonder what kind of person thinks like that.

That was denial too, I suppose.

How could those things have happened to me. How could I have lived through them? Well then, perhaps it wasn't as I remembered or maybe, had not happened just as I remembered. Always, I would feel protective of my mother. As I went through it, I felt anger, resentment, utterly shocked surprise that these things I remember were probably always true. That is just how I present it to myself.

"These things were probably always true."

Now, I am waiting to see. I understand I am healing, and that things will seem different. I am no longer afraid of what will happen if they call or come to my door.

I still have work to do.

This is a time of rest for me, and I am grateful to have it.

I am beginning to feel...not compassion for my mother ~ never that. But a kind of deep sorrow now, for us both. Probably the way it looks to see the aftermath of a war in a village by the sea. I believe this will change. Resentment at things lost and sorrow at the waste and rising rage because I don't understand the why of it.

And all I can know to comfort myself is: Why doesn't matter.

I am grateful to know these things before my mother has passed. On the other hand, I wish I had my mother right here with me. I like my mom, and I think she is beautiful.

Except that she's not.

It's like if I look at their brokenness, at their nakedness, I don't know what to do with that. So I am keeping the heat on.

No compassion.

Not yet.

She was happy.

I am glad you saw your mom happy, Copa.

I feel that way too, sometimes. It's the best feeling, right up there with the best feelings there are.

I tried to talk to her. Mama, I begged her. She would not talk to me. Just fury. Fury at me. Because I had brought her to that place.

D H mom is in a facility, now. It was very hard for everyone at first. D H had told his own mother he was going to do that, but then, her doctor ordered it. It was no longer safe for D H mom to live at home, not matter how many caretakers were hired for her.

D H mom screamed, too.

The lady in the room down the hall screamed.

They are so angry, Copa, at what their lives have become.

D H felt terrible. But he said: "She lived her life. I deserve to live mine. I love my mom, but sometimes I don't like her very much."

It has been nearly seven months now. D H mom stopped screaming, and began to cry. Now, she has come into balance again, but she is very sad. Happy to see her children, or to see me, when I visited her.

Copa, could it be that, though your mom's screaming retraumatized you, she was screaming for herself and not at you?

When I called before I came she told the caretakers she couldn't care less if I came or not. I would show up. She would scream.

D H mom was so angry at her children, too. She felt one of them should have taken her into their home. Because they had all been well-mothered, none of them would. This is an important point, Copa. Well mothered children see their mothers clearly, and they see them very differently than we do. They want what is best for them, and they understand they cannot give them the care the mother requires and neither can they cope with the mother's rage at her situation.

D H was spared making that decision. But we were looking at facilities. It was the doctor who ordered that D H mom could not go home again.

I absolutely hear you on this, Copa.

It was hard on me, being part of what was happening to D H mom. I know her children suffered hellishly because their mother was helpless and in pain and raging and losing function. It was just awful. They had one another, Copa. And somehow, the family is healing, is coming together again, now.

The horror you feel is a real thing, Copa.

The guilt you feel is a real thing; something you need intentionally to forgive yourself for feeling. There is no perfect solution to the aging of our mothers. A good mother will protect her children from that. A selfish mother will blame them, and will never let that go.

And once she sees this torture working, destroying her child, a certain kind of mother will never let go.

A certain kind of mother, Copa.

Your mother was wrong to do what she did.

That's the main issue with mothers who continue to be abusive after they look like sweet little things we need to protect.

We are vulnerable, and have been raised to believe their pain is more important than our own.

That is the difference between the way my siblings and I see my mother and the way D H and his siblings see his.

The started screaming in the office. Said her Axxhole hurt.

D H mom would do things like that.

Then, she could switch and be the sweetest little thing.

Here again, D H and his sibs could see their mother as a separate person who had every right to say bad words or not. There was discomfort there? But not judgment. I don't see the judgment, the personal taking on of the shaming misbehavior, in D H family.

That is the difference.

By this time the owners of the place were disgusted with me.

They had no right, Copa. That was a wrongness that happened to you. Facility staff are trained to support the families through something more difficult than even they can understand. Whenever D H mom was in the hospital or in Rehab, or when she was home from surgery or wanted to go to the Emergency Room a million times a day (it seemed like), the kids were able to keep her weird or crazy or obnoxious behaviors a separate thing from themselves because they had been well-mothered in the first place.

D H and his family complain bitterly, complain all the time, complain to the administrator and then, try to go over his head too, about every little thing the mother needs. It can be a game, sometimes. Everyone gets so upset with the facility and the mom and themselves and one another but they do not take it personally at gut level to mean anything, anything at all, about who they are.

And that is the difference, Copa.

They were well-mothered to begin with.

They feel like a litter of puppies when they all are together. Everybody out for himself, everybody glad to be together.

Neither D H nor any of his siblings would ~ it would never occur to them to care what facility staff thinks about them, about their mother. (Okay, there was some discomfort when she would not ever stop screaming. But then, the lady across the
hall was screaming all the time, too. It was a difficult time.)

My point is that staff should have received training to how to comfort and carry you through your mother's adjustment. It sounds like they did not know how to do that for you.

Or maybe Copa, your heart could only hear that your mother was unhappy and it was somehow your fault and so, you could not hear them.

She said my mother was attention seeking and had invented her complaint.

At the same time the doctor examined my mother and had found a horrible pressure ulcer that they had concealed.

Two times my mother aspirated and was hospitalized. The second time, she never went back. She stayed in the hospital. After that she came home. The screaming had stopped.

These are the things that happen Copa, as we begin to die. Your mother could have been turned every two hours, day and night. As her circulation began to shut down, her skin will have become more and more and more fragile.

I will say the facility should have been aware of the ulcer. It is probable the nurse's aides knew, and the nurses, and were caring for her properly.

These are the things that happen to us all as we die, Copa.

You did everything just right for your mother. No one can provide the care an elderly person who is beginning to die requires.

No one.

They come to require more and more care.

The quality of their lives suffers if their families try to keep them at home.

You did nothing wrong, Copa.

It is such a hard thing to watch a mother die, over time. It would be kinder if it could just happen and be over and done with.

You did nothing wrong, Copa.

You did everything, every very hard thing, exactly right.

Good job, Copa.

It was not you who made your mother old.

It was God.

I have not been able to forgive myself for insisting that my mother leave my home. We ultimately turned the master bedroom and bath into a private space for her and brought her home, hiring 3 people to help us.

Why I ask myself, instead of throwing her out, did I not bring in people to help from the onset?

Because you did not know.

When you knew better, you did better.

You did not throw her out, Copa. You did the right thing, every single time.

You love your mother, still.

Bless yourself, and let go.

Life is a very hard thing, sometimes.

Why I ask myself, instead of throwing her out, did I not bring in people to help from the onset?

I think the only answer is this:

So this is where we will work then, Copa.

We ultimately turned the master bedroom and bath into a private space for her and brought her home, hiring 3 people to help us.

Copa, your mother was dying. There is nothing you could have done about that. It was her time. You turned yourselves out of your sanctuary to make a dying place for your mother.

You merit sanctuary, Copa.

This is a place we can work, you and I.

I am sorry you had to go through this alone, Copa. Here again, that our parents have prevented healing between the sibs leaves us at a painful disadvantage when our parents begin the long process of dying.

Mercy, Copa.

You need to bless yourself with mercy; life is very hard, Copa.

Have mercy.

The quality of Mercy is not strain'd;
it falleth as the gentle rain from Heav'n
upon the place beneath.

It is twice blest;
it blesseth him that gives
and him that takes.

'Tis mightiest in the Mighty.

That is Shakespeare, of course. From the Merchant of Venice, though I am not sure I am quoting correctly.

I fell in love with my Mother. In so doing, I gave up my own life.

I love my mother too, Copa. She seems magical to me.

But I refuse to allow the way I was hurt into seeing her dominate my life, now.

We are not supposed to love our mothers that way, Copa.

That is how we are supposed to love ourselves.

That is what they took from us, Copa. Even that one, glorious thing: to recognize and claim and love ourselves with the same depth and passion and concern and caring and mercy that we love, and reflect love, to them, to our abusers.

"Your life is not more important than mine." She responded "I know."

That is how D H family see their mother. They love her, true. They love themselves more because that is how she loved them, all of her life.

So it feels right and good to them to care for her now, but to love their own lives, too.

As she taught them.

My responsibility to my mother is to do the things there are for me to do. Whatever it costs me. Whatever it costs my D H. Whatever it costs my children.

But my children are stronger than me.

They think their grandma is a jerk, but they love her like a separate person and don't really mind what she does.

That's the difference, Copa.

This is where you need to heal.

Mercy, Copa.

For you, to yourself.

Your mother's death and illness were not yours to suffer. You will have your own time of facing death. It will be hard. It will be lonely. But you will not blame your son, or find comfort in his suffering.

Your mother did.

My mother uses her death, the possibility that this could happen to her and then, we will never be free of the guilt of it, to recapture my siblings and myself.

To enslave us to her death and her dying, Copa.

It's scary to know what is happening to our own mother. Each of us is dealing with it as best we know: Every one of us is lost in the pain of it.

And our mother? Loves being the center of attention, of fear, of permissiveness from her children who were taught she is of more value than we are.

That is the difference.

I write these words and I cannot find a way out from the pain. I cry as I type. Still, I would do anything, anything in this world to have chosen differently, to have kept her here with me. I believe I behaved cruelly and I almost never behave cruelly.

That's okay, Copa. You are correct in being sad, in feeling confused, in not knowing how to put this away.

This is where we will work. Where you will work. We all will just be here for you, listening and posting and celebrating your coming back from this terribly hurtful thing that has happened.

Because we know something in our hearts Copa, that you do not know, yet: Your mother had no right; decency forbid it, what she did to you, how she bought and sold and cheapened every noble thing.

But we do know that true thing, Copa.

That is how I know you are coming through this already. You are halfway through the forest, Copa. That light in the distance is us. Keep going, keep making your way through the so painfully evil forest.

Mercy, Copa.

Have mercy.

I still wish I had chosen her instead of myself. And I feel I will punish myself as long as I live for this error. Sometimes in my secret heart I blame M. It is his fault I tell myself. If he had not stuck up for me, I would not have not broken the rules of my family.

Copa. I am so proud and happy for your courage. You are amazing.

Copa. Your mother would relish the taste of your life, given over for her; of your life forever destroyed for the sake of the guilt she nurtured in you where strong, mother love should have been.

No punishment for you, Copa.

Freedom.

Joy, where once you suffered.

An even exchange Copa. You have already suffered.

Good. One less thing. That only leaves joy; the true joy of falling in love with Copa, at last.

Bye, mom.

Snip.

I am far down on the totem pole. I broke the rules. I pay the price.

You are on the bottom, at the root. That is where new possibilities, new ways of seeing and of being and loving and savoring our lives are seeded and grown.

This is the price, Copa.

You just need to have a good look at what you bought. See through your own eyes Copa, not those of your abuser. If you cannot see the truth there at the heart of the thing imagine someone, some strong someone who can.



Cedar

You are doing so well, Copa. This is very hard stuff, and you are doing it so courageously and so well.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

And the golden children most often want to think their mothers were good people so they say "it wasn't that bad" or "it was his fault."

Well, the thing is we had no way to understand just how different our families of origin are and were than everyone else's. I would know the shame of trying to keep it secret, of not wanting those other little girls to know...to know what I knew, about me.

To know who my mother told me I was.

Sometimes, I feel hatred lash out. This is one of them and I love it.

Just that if it had happened to them too they most certainly would not be singing her praises.

True.

Oh for heaven's sake I am stuck in italics again.

Gaaaa.

Now where was I.

This is what I know about singing the praises of the mother. D H family do not do that. When we had the abusive mother discussion with our neighbors that time, it was said that only children who have been abused sing the praises of their mothers.

The rest of us see our mothers as adults that we love, good things and bad things and all things. They, those mothered well, see from their own, adult perspectives.

That is what I am trying to do, too. I can't. Not yet.

But I will.

And then, I will be free of my mother's crippling hatred.

They need one kid to scapegoat and another to exalt

Otherwise, how would the scapegoat know she was being scapegoated.

How could the exalted one not take those accolades so freely offered ~ those accolades that contribute to an essential imbalance he will never recover from.

From the tons of stuff I've read, obviously the scapegoat and the Golden Child rarely get along or see eye to eye. Mother is very important to the Golden Child.

The Golden will have been taught how to see both himself and the scapegoat. The problem is that both will have been taught to see through the abuser's eyes, and not their own.

So says Cedar this morning. And you guys know I know everything. Sometimes. Well, once I did. I think it was a Tuesday. That same Tuesday Wimpy was always telling Popeye he would pay for his hamburgers on.

I mean, I know today is Wednesday.

:O)

Yet the scapegoat is often the strongest

Could it be that the scapegoat has never had to see herself with the grandiosity trained into the Golden from his or her birth? And again, the obscenity there is that all of it, every stinking bit of it, was done at the mother's discretion and insistence.

Gaaaa.

It is as if all of her decisions were all about her own well being, taking nothing else into account.

Perhaps that is where and how she was blinded by the mother. Made blind to anything real, and able to see only the way the abusive mother permitted her to see.

I doubt Thing 1 is aware of all her choices, but that is between the two strangers.

And it seems to me that this is exactly what the unhealthy mother wants, forever.

No healing.

The best I can do for myself in this time is to understand the patterns if I can. But I think my sibs and I will never have one another in that litter of puppies way my D H and his sibs have one another.

That is so much joy and affirmation and cherishment to miss out on, forever.

I see you, mom. I see you and see you and see you...but I cannot change one thing that you did to us, to all of us.

That is a place of suffering, for me.

Cedar

Sorry about the italics, SWOT.

 

[BusynMember]

Thanks cedar. I'm posting from my phone so there may be hilariously wrong words in spots. Cedar, now that I am gone, t1and 2 are suddenly twins. They need to be. E is gone. Dad is old and boo boo is not interested in what they whine about me. Neither has anyone to lean on except one another. My sister an not exist without a DNA connection validating how she feels it is. I'm glad for them because I have peeps. Everyone needs peeps. They can use each other to lean on forever. I will not know.where their story goes. They won't know mine.
I am an only child.
I never did believe that DNA means much.
I feel a little badly that u still have the compassion to love your mother's and I don't and did not even feel sad at the funeral. I must be frozen when it comes to her.
I did love my mother so much once. But I would not do her bidding.
But I can't look back and feel more than some apathy just like I now feel apathy toward 1 and 2. They can't hurt me anymore.
My obit will not list her or dibs. Just grandma, dad, and my REAL family. So morbid! Sorry!
I refuse to give love to abusers any more. I can't.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

An uncertain Sun;
eclipsed, insane, enraged, untried
Illuminate a newly ordered land
wherein that which once was Innocent
Recall itself of ancient passages;
recall a blind and savaged Child
that living, breathing
died

Recall a razor's nicked and crazied edge

Whatever. I am looking for this poetry. I cannot remember exactly how it goes.

The Sun is self concept, is the eviscerated self; is the child, born to the abusive mother.

Yes. This piece is mine. I wrote it, I mean. Something like thirty years ago, I wrote it.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

An uncertain Sun
eclipsed; insane, enraged, untried
Illuminate a newly ordered land
wherein that which once was Innocent
recall itself of ancient passages...

Recall a blind and savaged Child
that living, breathing...died

Recall a razor's nicked and crazied edge and heard, with bated breath
the tale with which its Listener
replied

I...believe you, Child

***

I think that is it. I cannot find the original poetry. I have worked that poem through the years. In the beginning, the Child withdrew and "slowly...slowly died."

Then, the poetry changed.

The part about believing the Child within. That change happened while I was in Family of Origin therapy. The poetry about princesses on strings and the ally, gone before them came from that therapy time, too.

Anyway, when the poetry changed, and the Child (me, of course) was heard and believed, that is when I began to be able to hear my own story and believe myself.

And so, integrity was seeded.

After that?

It was just a matter of doing this thing. Copa or SWOT, if you identify, if you find it helpful, there is more poetry.

I will post it if you feel it would be helpful. It contains disturbing, horrifying, hurtful imagery. So maybe I would not post some of it. But that is what it felt like, to have been that abused little girl that I was.

Only I did not even have that word, "abused" when I was little. I did not even know that much, when it was happening to me.

And neither did you, when it was happening, to you.

So perhaps you would not find the poetry of that time too disturbing.

You lived.

I did, too.

Now, it is just a matter of doing this thing.

***

My sister called.

I picked up.

And I said what I say here about what I know and about what I see now, and how I see it.

And she said our mother had changed.

And I said she had "changed" when our father died, too.

And she blew up over the exclusion part.

And she blew up over what I said about the way my father's death was handled and continues to be handled.

And she said my brother calls there now all the time. Apparently, she and my mother are taking calls, these days.

Score one for me, maybe.

And I told her no one is so busy, is too busy to pick up a phone or to return a phone call or to acknowledge a message left, for six years.

And she blew up, again.

Said I was lying, lying about everything, and that I was sick, and that D H and I sit around and drink too much and tell ourselves stories about how we are right and good and they are not.

And I said: This is my truth. Your truth will be different. I love you too much to pretend what is happening between all of us is okay. It is not okay. This is my true thing that I know. What you know is your true thing. I just refuse to accept your truth as my own.

And I told her that if she got through it, when she got through it, I would be right here for her, and for me, and for all of us.

And she said I had never been there. That I always opt away, opt out, refuse to participate in love and in family and in responsibility for our mother.

Responsibility.

The same word I have used to describe what I feel for my mother. My word for what drives me regarding what I need to do for my mother. The same word that justifies spending time with her or giving her my time, my time of my life.

And my sister was crying and screaming and she said I was the one who taught her compassion and forgiveness and understanding were correct responses.

And she said that I was, and that our grandmother was, the only one, in all of her life, who taught her what it was to love and be loved and how could I do this to her now when her life and her marriage are falling apart and when she is the one "responsible" there is that word, again, for our mother.

So I told her again that I loved her too much to do this that way we are doing this.

And she went silent and I thought she had hung up, so I hung up. And just before I touched the button that ends the call on a Smart phone, I heard her voice.

But I continued to end the call.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Hi Cedar,

Thank you beyond measure for your care. I do not now have the energy to respond, and before I do so want again re-read your post.

Have fallen a bit further if it is possible.

Making public the death spiral,
M got testy with me yesterday (things are tense here)
No stamina
The reenactment by my son,
Of the role of my father,
The central relationships of my life seem to have exploded inside me.

Is the truth of the matter that I have always been impaired and the 60 years of functioning life I lived were themselves a lie?

How many women or men go to bed...resigning from life...due to pain and despair?

Let's make this even more punishing: How many women or men who learned Portuguese and Spanish and Tango and Samba and Salsa at 50 go to bed for years on end? (Let alone work. Have been unable to see their way to work.)

Not one if you don't count me.

But I count me very much.

So, this is my own private game of Truth or Consequences.

The question boils down to this one: Is the crime in me or in others? Or can we share?

Without a doubt, I am suffering the consequences. The question is where lies the crime.

Am I falsely accused, and meriting pardon? And who will step forward to speak for me?

My sister has become part of the Innocence Project (in her private moments, she has contempt for those for whom she advocates).

And she has her part in the crime having left me alone to deal with everything, attacking me afterwards for my crimes.

Another response to horror: run from it. Easier this way to point the figure to those who imperfectly deal.

M is my only defender. Unfortunately I have the tendency to run from or attack those that try to stick with me or help me.

I guess that comes from having felt cornered and alone my whole life. Too bad.

Will grief ever leave me? Or can we negotiate, less grief, this is a plea deal I would accept.

We are trying to prepare the house to leave here to follow our plan to establish ourselves in a city far away.

I work a day or two...a few hours...Something happens. I go to bed again. And cry.

I guess this too can be re-framed.

I go to bed to restore myself...in the way that I seem to now require. Integrating is the word, perhaps. I am integrating and reintegrating the past, in order to finish my life.

That is all I can do right now.

Thank you Cedar.

 

[BusynMember]

Perhaps that is where and how she was blinded by the mother. Made blind to anything real, and able to see only the way the abusive mother permitted her to see.

This was in adulthood and although she had different opinions, like political, than E., she definitely picked up E's ideas about me. But she was also a person who liked to skew reality to make her seem better.

Cedar, for years and years she would not see my grandmother whom I talked with almost every day. We were very close and loved each other very much. Grandma would say about her "I wouldn't know her if she bumped into me." T2 came back into her life, probably to please E., late in Grandma's life. And I mean LATE. Yet when Grandma passed on E. got grandma's furniture and had it reupholstered for T2 as a mommento to Grandmother. She didn't ask ME if I wanted anything of Grandmas (didn't need anything. I had all those memories. I still have them). But it was so odd for E. to spend money at all let alone give this trophy to the grandchild who spent years and years ignoring her, like Grandmother didn't exist, and overlook the grandhild she KNEW was closest to her.

To this day, 2 thinks that the few years she spent talking to grandmother was as significant as being grandma's best girl (and I was) from the time I was itty bitty. We were great friends too and Grandma confided in me.

2 sees herself the way she wants to see herself. And that is a trait of E's too. Golden Child has no SO so E. was his SO. He would not see an y bad in her. I get it, but that's where all this came from. If E. said it, it had to be true. If E. did it, it had to be right.

Blahhhhhhhhhhhhhhh.

I'm glad I didn't drink E's poininous Kool-Aid. I loved my grandmother with all my heart and trust me E. was MUCH NICER to me before grandmother passed away. That's when the REAL abuse started as far as no contact and disowning...Grandma would have been furious at her. And I appreciate knowing that. But I do see Grandmother's flaws and she could stir up trouble too. The difference is, her heart was softer. Much.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I go to bed to restore myself...in the way that I seem to now require. Integrating is the word, perhaps. I am integrating and reintegrating the past, in order to finish my life.

That is all I can do right now.

That is all you have to do right now. Everything else, the reaching for healthy perspective and the growing into healing, that all happens on its own. We are meant to be healthy and whole, Copa. We are meant to perceive through our own hearts, our own eyes and emotions and minds. You have done nothing wrong.

Copa.

You did nothing wrong.

It is perfectly okay to fall apart as many times as we need to how else can we put ourselves back together correctly?

The quality of Mercy, Copa. It's a real thing, Mercy. It cools the heat of it, brings the cooling breeze through the green grasses, the rain so gentle and sweet and good.

I love it that you rephrased the part about needing to rest, about needing to be in your own, safe, comforting bed where you heal and where you dream.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

SWOT, thank you for your response, and I will answer later.



Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Will grief ever leave me?

Grief is sacred ground, Copa. We move over and across it again and again. It is a measure of respect for ourselves, and for that which we love.

And that includes us, Copa.

We are moving through our lives; gathering, cherishing, having and letting go.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

M got testy with me yesterday (things are tense here)

One time Copa? I was going on and on and on about my sister and my mother and my sister, again. And D H threw our dinner right over the railing. (Italians have a thing about food. So that was the most shocking thing he could have done.)

So we didn't even have any dinner that night.

Huh.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I'm glad for them because I have peeps. Everyone needs peeps. They can use each other to lean on forever. I will not know.where their story goes. They won't know mine.
I am an only child.

This is an interesting concept. I remember when we were posting about people who have no children ~ about how fulfilling their lives are and can be. This is the same concept, in a way. That we can know there are people who were only children, and that they did and do very, very well in their lives.

i am not sure how this concept will help me. I was not sure how that other concept, the one about the happiness of those without children living fulfilled lives would help me either, given that I did have kids.

But somehow, it did help me, when I would imagine our old ages being so different than I had envisioned.

It's like, there is a way to do this, and to do it joyfully and from a place of strength, and not from a place of rejection or rage or regret.

A tool for our FOO tool box, then.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Recall a blind and savaged Child that living, breathing...died....
I...believe you, Child

Thank you, Cedar.

I just refuse to accept your truth as my own.

Why did she call, Cedar? What was her motive? What was she looking for? For this? To tell you this?

And she said I had never been there. That I always opt away, opt out, refuse to participate in love and in family and in responsibility for our mother.

Was she seeking to conciliate or to blame? Did she ask for forgiveness? Or compassion. Or justification. In what way did she take responsibility? Her part.

I told her no one is so busy, is too busy to pick up a phone or to return a phone call or to acknowledge a message left, for six years. And she blew up, again.

Was that the whole point?

And I told her that if she got through it, when she got through it, I would be right here for her, and for me, and for all of us.

It is never enough what you offer. To be a shoulder, to offer a hand. The whole loaf or nothing, are their terms. Well-taught daughters of their mothers, there is no remedy that is enough, except that which is impossible to give, and still live.

She wants you...whether it is to consume you, be you, or co-opt you so that you no longer live as an independent, integral being. Support, being heard is not that what she wants.

My sister many years ago, severely fractured her arm. Walking her dog, she fell, when another dog attacked her own.

Hospitalized, she called me, crying. Wanting me to come to where she was, in another City, to leave work, to fly there to be with her.

I would not. She replied, you loved me once, when we were little. Why do you not love me, still?

I have never forgiven myself for not going to her. Looking back it was to finalize, concretize, what was to become a lifelong breach.

This had been, in retrospect, the last choice point our lives would offer. Every subsequent thing was to complete the course decided upon in that moment when I refused.

The thoughts behind the decision had been these: I was not her mother. I tried as a small girl to be her little Mother. Now I knew I never would, could or wanted to be the Mother that she had needed.

As much, I could not at that time forgive her for her many betrayals. So there. I had chosen for myself. For me.

I think I sensed at that time there would never be enough. What they want these sisters of ours is something more than we can ever give. And live. I hesitate to write what I really believe. That we exist, is too much. Or if I have gone to far, I will soften it: They want us to take responsibility, I think, for what never was or was, I am not sure.

Or blame, perhaps, blame is the word. The great reversal, your sister chose to abandon you. For six years. Yet you are the responsible one.

To have told the truth, is the problem here. You are not supposed to tell the truth. Even to yourself.

I...believe you, Child

And she said I had never been there....in family and in responsibility for our mother

What does this really mean, Cedar? These could be the accusations of my sister, of me. Did we leave or were we left?

There was no place at the table for me. If I was a little strong, a little happy or a little bit secure.

Copa or SWOT, if you identify

Yes. Yes. To all of it. Everything.
_______

One time Copa....D H threw our dinner right over the railing. (Italians have a thing about food. So that was the most shocking thing he could have done.)So we didn't even have any dinner that night.

This made me laugh. I mean CHUCKLE out loud. Sorry.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

That we exist, is too much.

I believe this to be true, Copa.

Six years ago, my mother began spending the winter months with my sister. I am not sure how to assess the things that happened next. Like me, my sister may always have needed affirmation from her mother. It was never given. Then, finally, my sister married a man with some money and some stuff. And my mother began to thaw toward her. (My sister is very generous with her time and with material things too, with my mother. More generous than me, for sure.) And after my father's death, my mother and my sister developed a strange intimacy designed, so it seems, to exclude the other sibs, the other grands. I was the oldest of three children and then, when I was six, another brother was born. My grandmother told me, when I was little, that it was my job to protect the other sibs. That happened prior to the youngest sib's birth. Whether our grandmother knew what was happening with our mother or not, I think I took on the role of protector at that time and never did let it go.

I also mothered my sister and brothers, physically and emotionally to the degree I was able, and I wanted to do that. It was a thing I could do, a counter to what my mother did and to the strange chaos of who she was.

So, it has taken me this many years to suspect and then see and then, believe what I see, happening with my sister and my mother. Or maybe it has always been this way between them, and I am only just now healthy enough to recognize and stand up to it. In any event, last year I refused to have anything to do with my mother, or with my sister, when my mother was here for the summer. My brother became upset with me for that.

This is the second time something like this has happened. The first time, there was no contact between myself and my family of origin other than my sister for five years. I still am not certain why that time happened. I did not choose it. We had called to invite my parents for dinner and my mother said no and then: "I told you I was going to do this."

And as I see it, now as I post this for you and for me and for all of us, that was an incident of abuse that my mother enacted. Of course it was. That is why I feel shock and surprise and ashamed. That is why I feel powerless and vulnerable and out of control regarding that terribly hurtful thing that happened, then.

And I never knew why, and I don't know how or why, any of it happened to this day and that is the flavor of abuse.

And I never got that before this morning, either.

But I do know a person should be able to trace why a thing happens or that person (me) is not responsible for having let herself and her family down. Is not responsible for having been "not enough", somehow.

Another fine insight for me from this thread.

I see you.

I see you back.


***

But I continued to see and to hear from and to keep contact with my sister. We would talk about it all the time. She would tell me how much my father missed me, and how wrong it was for the family to have been split in this way.... And about how my mother said that if Cedar did not want to be part of this family then this family wanted no part of her.... It wasn't until the events of the past six years that I realized my sister was staying with my mother the last time this happened, too. So, I began having a look at what was, without compassion for my sister or my mother. It became more and more blatantly obvious that they were doing what it looked like they were doing.

I was pretty surprised that time, too. So I didn't believe it, of course. But it kept being the only explanation that could hold all the pieces of what was happening to all of us.

However I feel toward my sister she hates me.

Well, you could blow me over with a feather.

SWOT, I thought you were the only one with sister issues. It's just like that time about verbally abusive adult children. And at first I didn't believe it and then, I did. Or when you would post about categorizing and identifying emotional illness in our families of origin. And I was so uncomfortable with that, but it helped me so much to stand up ~ to have the beginning of a place to stand up from.

Yay for me that I stuck with it and yay for you, too. And welcome to Copa, and off we go. Almost to the Wizard's place, now. Still in the poppy field, but we can see that freaking castle in the distance.

***

My sister and my mom unite in hating me, glory in it. The reward system fueling this particular dysfunction would go like this: For the mother, a permanent wedge between the siblings especially between the siblings and the sibling that is like me. Because I am willing to advise, to forgive a thousand times, to hear any secret and never reveal it. I hold steady for tears. I make dinners and celebrate their presence and celebrate their children and celebrate their coming home.

And it makes sense that my mother, who refused for so long to host or recognize or attend any holiday or family event, any event that would celebrate us and our families and being family ~ it makes sense that she would hate that.

Insight # whatever this one is.

She is such a black and wizened old thing, still so bitter. I hate her, now. That is why I see her that way, I suppose. But man, she looks like a kindly, blue eyed angel with the prettiest white hair, my mother. Which imagery will hold true over time?

Both; because both are true. Like a living Dorian Gray, my mother is not who she appears to be. I will love the beautiful mother but watch her eyes.

I see you.

I see you back.

***

But I am not the mother, and this must be why my sister hates me. It would explain why she did what she did to my daughter. It would explain why my sister feels differently about my children than I do about hers. She may hate my children the same way she hates me and for the same reason: I am and I am not, the mother she needs.

What an extraordinary insight; what an extraordinary thing to have realized.

Of course.

All the pieces falling into place, all the strangenesses, too.

And this is why they so despise D H; and why they seem to despise our lifestyle and our stuff. Which makes sense, because I am invulnerable to them with him at my side, unless I betray both him and myself. Which I have, pretty routinely, been doing. In all these years of my marriage, my sister could do no wrong. Neither could my mother, now that I think of it on this second rereading before posting. But then when I took another look at things from this new perspective I have been working so hard to achieve, it turned out she has been a total biatch. And I just kept not seeing it or something.

Huh.

***

I have never forgiven myself for not going to her. Looking back it was to finalize, concretize, what was to become a lifelong breach.

I'm sorry, Copa. We don't get to have sisters, either.

It is beginning to feel right to me to understand my sister used and manipulated and deserted me, Copa! I still can't believe this could be, but there it is. Even that my sister who is sixty years old Copa, played those notes regarding 1) the only person, along with our grandmother, who loved her and 2) that she was only doing what I taught her, forgiving and understanding and believing in our mother...that's cold, Copa. Like a magician pulling progressively more startlingly scarlet scarves out of a hat, my sister pulled out reasons and rationales for what our situation is with amazing rapidity and dexterity one after the other, Copa. She ended with the statements about loving and forgiveness because they have never not worked, before.

And your sister used those same techniques almost word for word and that blows me away.

I need to be very aware of the way this sister hates and hurts me, and of just how she gets in.

So do you, Copa. Even in how we think about where our sisters are, in how we think about ourselves in regard to what has happened between our sisters and ourselves.

D H has told me repeatedly to beware of my sister once my mother is gone. He believes I will have no defense against my sister if D H dies, or if we are divorced.

We need to be wise, and we need to be wary where our sisters are concerned. Just as we cannot see our children as the adults they are sometimes, so we do not see the sisters we mothered and protected as adults. But they see us, Copa. With crystal clarity. Here again, it is a matter of action, not words. Our sisters are very good with words that will leave us dancing, like princesses on strings, Copa.

I still can hardly believe what I believe.

I am so surprised.

the last choice point our lives would offer.

I am sorry, Copa. It must seem very lonely to you. I feel that way too, sometimes.

But I think you did the right thing, Copa.

Between the things SWOT has shared, what I am beginning to see where my sister and mother are concerned and now, your sister's issues too...this has to be a fairly typical pattern in dysfunctional families.

Huh.

The thoughts behind the decision had been these: I was not her mother. I tried as a small girl to be her little Mother. Now I knew I never would, could or wanted to be the Mother that she had needed.

That is the strangest thing, Copa. I was thinking thoughts just like those, yesterday. That though I was willing to stand in for our mother, and though my sister may have needed mothering so badly that she was willing to accept me as stand in for our real mother...I was never the authentic mother she needed. I am not her mother. Maybe that is why she hates me as she does. Maybe that explains my mother and my sister uniting to create this society of exclusivity. My mother always did hate me on so many levels; my sister must, too.

I feel badly, for myself.

It's not that I can't look at it. I am just so surprised that it could be so. But when I look at events, at the real things that have happened, I see that this interpretation of things must be correct.

All the pieces fit.

A clinker, not a coin of gold, after all.

Well, how do you like that.

Thank you for sharing at this level, Copa. Between seeing what happened to you and to SWOT and now, what appears to have been happening to me, I am putting the pieces together. That is why the usual tricks are not working this time, between my sister and my mother and me. Because of the work we do, here.

Good.

One less thing.

There was no place at the table for me. If I was a little strong, a little happy or a little bit secure.

Well, I don't know, Copa. I only know there is something not right, here. But you are very right about strength or happy or security. That rings very true.

There are so many separate things here I have never believed. So, these things are abusive incidents, too. D H says I have allowed my sister to abuse me. In the classic sense of emotional manipulation and abuse, done to destroy the abused person.

He may be right.

I am so surprised.

These kinds of thoughts you have validated for me Copa, have given me the validation I need to continue working through my vulnerability to my sister and my mother.

Thank you.

This site is amazing.

How could it be that you and SWOT could both come along now, and all of us at that same place in our process? Our mothers, our sisters, ourselves awakening.

Good, good work I am doing.

***

My sister hates me because I am her mom, but I'm not; she hates my children as though they were her siblings.

And that explains the FB stalking thing that happened when daughter was so ill.

My head is spinning.

I need to do this; need these issues clarified because the next confrontation will be mother and sister, together.

And I will have to be very strong, in my heart, and in my head.

Cedar

My mother returns to a home on a lake near the lake we are on, for the summer months. My sister will visit. Unless the mother has the man there again that she had there the year after my father's death. My sister hates this man so passionately.

Now I see that piece, see how all these separate pieces create the seamless whole, smooth as silk.

Crystal.

Ringing crystal.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Why did she call, Cedar? What was her motive? What was she looking for? For this? To tell you this?

She has been calling since I stopped wanting to be anywhere in the mix of whatever this is. As I have become healthier, I just stopped taking her calls. Prior to this time, she and my mother were not calling, not willing to talk when we called on Christmas (D H family always call everyone who is not with them on any holiday when they are together. Nieces and nephews call in ~ everyone speaks on those family feast days. We talk about what everyone is having for dinner. And it all works because that is just how they do it. When the mother would call her sisters in Italy?

They would talk about what each was cooking for dinner that night.

And that was back in the days when overseas calls were outrageously expensive.

And I never even knew it all those years, but that is such a perfectly beautiful thing.

Anyway, D H would always say: Call your family, now. Or, after those few disastrous first times: Call your family, too. Because no one who was not raised like we were can believe, in their hearts, that our families really are as toxic as they look and feel.

D H just never believed it could be what it looked like it was.

How could anyone not want to talk to everyone at Christmas or the 4th of July?

But we were decidedly made to feel weird for having interrupted whatever was going on at the holiday happening at my sister's or even, my brother's, now that I think about it.

And that was hurtful to me personally, and publicly their behaviors, that shocked, what do we do now why are you calling behavior, shamed me in front of my D H.

I digress.

Why did my sister call.

She has been calling. She would just leap into talking about her life or her kids or whatever as though my response to her had not changed. This was extremely disrespectful, but I could not see that at first, of course. But as I healed a little more, I found myself wondering why she was calling me. Not even in a nasty or hurtful way. I felt no response ~ not like the usual response I would have to my sister. (Which was a mother's response ~ I get that, now but could not understand what was happening with me, then.) And I said: "Why are you calling me." And I said: "I don't want to be who I have to be to have relationship with you and my mother."

And she ignored that.

Just never commented except for the forever lie: I love you.

Which was just enough of a lie that I kept trying to puzzle this thing out without the pieces I needed, to do so.

***

After I had stopped calling either of them at all, and after I had stopped picking up for either of them, my sister left a message in a sad, haggard voice. Something about my mother. And I blasted into trauma response: Had she died or was she dying now and had I been wrong in turning away and on and on it went, Copa. Similar to the horrifying questions confronting you as you returned to and took responsibility for, your own mother.

I did not know you, then. And I did not have any of the pieces that I have, now. And SWOT and I had not begun exchanging information on our families of origin. None of that had begun to happen, yet. So I called my sister back, once I tried to figure out what I should ~ where I should stand, I guess.

It was a scary and confusing thing.

Very much, that is true.

And my sister said: Mom is getting frail and we are taking her to the seashore and we need you to be there, too. This has gone on long enough.

And I said that I would think about that.

But here is the thing: My sister played the mother-is-dying card and my mother was not dying. So even I could see the manipulation in that. But it was a true thing that my mother would be dying one day, and that I had chosen to turn away from her.

So, that was pretty awful.

So whether they went to the seashore or not I don't know. But I do know that D H and I live on an island, not only a seashore. And I do know that though my mother has been with us there twice, my sister would never come there, with or without my mother until after I had told her, twice, and after my mother was also given to understand, that we no longer wanted them to come to that place, to that beautiful place that should have been so special a place for all of us, anymore.

That is when my sister wanted to come

But even I knew by then that it was too late for those things, those happy things, I had envisioned for all of us, there.

In my bitterest recollections of how my feelings have changed for my sister: I was talking to her D H about a planned visit. I told him we were going to a rooftop restaurant on the Gulf to watch the sun go down together and drink and eat and swing at the swings they have at all the tables. And he was so happy to think it, and I was so happy to think it.

We had brought my mother to that place, D H and I, on her visits to us.

And that never, ever happened with my sister and I, while we were still young and strong and pretty enough to have really celebrated that rooftop sunset, those condos on the beach we might have rented on the same floor. None of that happened.

And I cannot even tell you how I resent that these things never, ever, happened, for us, for my sister and me.



Soon enough, I stopped believing her when she said they were coming. It wasn't long after that that I seemed to lose even grief or regret or anger or hope or pleasure at the thought of them, coming.

And then, I did not want them ~ not any of them ~ in our home, in that pretty, happy place with our neighbors and our lives and our sadness over what began happening when our daughter fell and fell and fell, apart.

But as I began to feel that way, and as I began first, making excuses for why my sister could not come right when she said she wanted to. (And she became very belligerent about that ~ about how I could say such things, about how I sounded like I didn't want her to come when she was making time, taking time from her eternal busyness, to make time for me, and how I never came to her house enough and for the rooftop and the sunset and what that would mean to our mother, to have us all there together.) And now I can hear the notes in those so exquisitely crafted manipulations? But then, I could and I could not, at the same time.

Denial, I get that now. That feeling that you know what you know but you don't know that for sure, so let's pick I never saw what I saw; let's pick I never heard what I heard and I do not know what I know.

So that is the nature of the game being played. My sister's last phone message to me was that she felt I was being foolish and stubborn, given that our mother has become so fragile, but that she would see me this summer, at the lake.

So I knew she would call. Unless she didn't. Or, I knew she would come to our door. Unless she didn't. But I was scared, Copa and SWOT. I could not think what to do, how to respond, where to stand.

Because it is an undeniable truth that my mother is in her mid-eighties.

That is the only true thing I knew.

But when the call came yesterday I picked up. And I did fine. And because I have all of you and this site, I am finding a place, a different way of seeing, and of knowing where I am.

Because it is an undeniably true thing that my mother is in her mid-eighties.

And one way or another, there will come a day when it will be too late to undo what I am doing, now.

And I need to know now, for that other time that is coming, how all these pieces fit together.

Lest I take to my own bed then, Copa.

And my mother and my sister too, it now appears sort of relatively almost clearly, have done what they have done. And they have done those things to me willfully, and with malicious intent, for a very, very long number of years.

And my sister hurt my child.

And this time, that lust of vengeance feeling I feel around what she did to my child when she was defenseless is correct.

And I don't even feel guilty about it except that I know it is wrong. So, okay. I feel ~ no, I know, that those feelings are wrong.

No compassion. Not yet.

Not when those to whom we are so vulnerable use that courageous and valiant thing that is very like mother love to excoriate and strip me to the bone.

No compassion; not yet.

***

Okay. So, I don't know why my sister called. I only knew that she had made that threat, that she was not about to allow the family to fall apart; that she intended to work this thing out face to face. (Intending to work this thing out face to face when I could actually see her face, and remember her crying and her pain and my helplessness to save or to comfort or to protect her from, that thing that was my mother when my mother was not in her own eyes and there was no one and there was nothing, that could save any of us, now.)

I must be playing to my audience here.

Surely, things could not have been that bad.

But then...where, in all the Hells that ever were, did that poetry come from.

I thought about that yesterday, when I wanted to post that poetry for us, here.

It is so horribly, perfectly, correct in the feelings it names.

How could I know that.

Cedar

Well, how could Leonard Cohen have known how to write "Halleluiah"? And how could kd lang have known how to sing it in just that strong and confused and vulnerable and broken and accepting way?

Thank you for witnessing for me, Copa and SWOT.

We are doing this thing, and it is a complexity of a hard thing to do.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Copa, could it be that, though your mom's screaming retraumatized you, she was screaming for herself and not at you?

Something to consider, maybe. Could it be that your mother began screaming again during your visits because you were the one who would suffer with her? The only one who loved her enough to hear her suffer and take it seriously? Witnessing means everything, when we are wordless with the pain of it. To have someone to hear us, to suffer with us, to take it seriously.

To be heard, in our suffering.

That is a gift beyond value that you gave to your mother, when seen in this way, Copa.

Without...if I were not trying to put the pieces together here, for my witnesses, I could only name the feelings in poetry that no one would see, Copa and SWOT.

That I have a witness.

That changes everything; makes it something I can name and define and make sense of.

That could be what your mother was doing, when she began screaming when you were there to see and to comfort her, Copa.

And you stayed, and you listened and you validated her presence and her reality and her suffering and her pain.

And maybe, because you gave her that gift beyond valuing, your mother was able to feel real, again. Facility staff do not hear suffering. They hear "So and so in bed 364 screamed through the shift so I gave xyz medication and now, she is quiet."

No witness to the pain beneath the screaming and screaming.

I wonder if that could be it, Copa.

If that could be why your mother screamed in your presence.

So hard a thing for you, Copa.

But you stood, and you heard her suffer, and you validated her suffering; and you took action.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

This poetry was written during the same period of time that the first poem I posted on this thread was written. In that time, I knew I had had an abusive childhood. I believed I had survived it, created a life, and that it could be safely left where it was. Much of the poetry of those years is such happy poetry. Stuff about the kids, mostly. I will post one here for you, too.

I feel like such a weird person, to have written as I have, as I do. So that is a reason to post it. But I will post the other one, first.

So you will still like me.

Or maybe, I am the only one who reads this poetry of mine and feels the echoes.

So, here is the first poem, then. You will like this one. (And me.) It was written in 1979.

A Mother, Twice Blessed

Soft and fragrant, my little ones
growing stronger each day
Me...a Mother ~ twice blessed!
Lord, what can a girl say....

God bless the man
who refilled my prescription for Valium!
Here I am, God ~
cowering behind any door with a lock
Steeped in the rare essence of
diaper pail
Mediating nursery intrigue ala Mr. Rogers
Big Bird, and Ben Spock!

They carry in spiders
and assorted diseases ~
Repeat verbatim, commercials they've seen but experience memory block
at their "Thank yous" and "Pleases"!

They cause frustration snacking at midnite
and subvert every diet with peanut butter and jelly at noon
They speak strictly pig latin ~
and seem to model their behavior on one of your more violent cartoons!

I...
I am their trusted confidante; included in every adventure
and blessed soundly in each of their prayers
Did they not think I might want to be there
when they decided to cut each others hair?!?

So goes the saga of a woman,
obsessed
Her pride in her offspring barely surpassed by her gratitude at being
no more than twice, blessed

***

Okay, you guys. Now for the spooky one. This was written in 1989.

An uncertain sun
an eerie, feeble emanation
Whose haunted echo sail silent, shadowed pools
which mirror no reflection
of such cowardly illumination

An Innocent did gambol o'er the land...
conversed, in mists of shifting, timeless hue
Glimpsed and pursued that creature destined to become
herself

Caught, and was caught by it
in the omniprescient dew

In dark and liquid magic
ancient secrets spark and shine
Whisper strange and wicked tales of that which was ~
gravid tales of dark, eldritch obscenities; of innocence
savaged dead and stolen...blind

Howling ricochets roar and rock the Child ~
rock; and bang and echo, noon to noon
O'er the hiss of eerie, Wind borne laughter

I will not post the remainder of this poem.

***

These other things I have posted are not my work. They have helped me, very much.


"There was a time when you were not a slave, remember that. You walked alone, full of laughter, you bathed bare-bellied. You say you have lost all recollection of it: remember. You know how to avoid meeting a bear on the track. You know the winter-fear when you hear the wolves gathering. But you can remain seated for hours in treetops to await morning. You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that...invent."

Monique Wittig
Les Guerilleres

***

"Justice does not happen by chance; indeed, something that subjective may never have happened, at all."

I don't remember where I got that one.

Bill Herbert, maybe?
The Jesus Incident

***

"The highest function of love is that it makes the loved one a unique and irreplaceable being."

Herbert/Ransom
The Ascension Factor

***

"Heartsick and mad, Pitt shouted to the open sky. Cold, self-possessed inner resolve took hold as it had so many times in the past. The old, die-hard Pitt came back on balance. His mind felt clear and sharp as a needle. If he had been left to die in a sacrificial pool, he was damned well going to find out why. With a commitment bred of desperation, he reached up and pulled himself out of the water."

Clive Cussler
I did not note the name of the book when I put this in my quote box.

***

"He felt like the chump in the Laurel and Hardy movie who yells for help and is thrown both ends of the rope."

Clive Cussler, again.

Thus, my avatar.

***

"We live happily indeed, among those who hate us, free of hatred; among those who are greedy, free of greed. Though we call nothing our own, we shall be like the bright gods, feeding on happiness."

Sorry guys. I don't know where I got that one, either.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

An Innocent did gambol o'er the land...
conversed, in mists of shifting, timeless hue
Glimpsed and pursued that creature destined to become
herself

innocence
savaged dead and stolen...blind

seated for hours in treetops to await morning.

(She) reached up and pulled (herself) out of the water."

With a commitment bred of desperation,

I did not choose it.

I (am) going to do this.

In dark and liquid magic
ancient secrets spark and shine. Whisper strange and wicked tales of that which was...

For the mother, a permanent wedge between the siblings especially between the siblings and the sibling that is like me.

If Cedar did not want to be part of this family then this family wanted no part of her....

I am willing to advise, to forgive a thousand times, to hear any secret and never reveal it.

I make dinners and celebrate their presence and celebrate their children and celebrate their coming home.

You say there are no words to describe this time, you say it does not exist. But remember. Make an effort to remember. Or, failing that...invent."

My sister played those notes regarding...the only person, along with our grandmother, who loved her and...

she was only doing what I taught her, forgiving and understanding and believing in our mother...

I am and I am not, the mother she needs.

Beware of (the) sister once my mother is gone.

she hates me.

I am invulnerable to them with him at my side,

unless I betray both him and myself.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Is the truth of the matter that I have always been impaired and the 60 years of functioning life I lived were themselves a lie?

I think no.

Do you see the difference in tone of the poetry I wrote when my life was as I would have it? When my children were mine, and we all were just having a life, and none of the things that would reawaken old trauma had begun to erode my sense of self?

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Hi, Copa.

I didn't know you were here when I posted. I had not read your post, I mean.

:O)

Cedar