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

[BusynMember]

I have so much on my mind and no one to talk to.

Now you can talk to us!!!

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

What SWOT said.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Before I get to your post Cedar I want to record what little of a dream I remember because I think it is Foo-important.

M slept on the couch. I had gotten mad last night. And afterwards alone in my room wrote a post about my Mother and ended up hysterically sobbing, like I was right before and after my Mother's death.

I seldom remember dreams.

I remember being in an apartment or home or hotel. Where exactly, I do not know.

In absolute, abject need, desperation and dependency. Utterly in need of help. With no one and nothing. Pacing from anxiety at my abject aloneness and need.

I am an adult but I think I am much younger than I am now (but that could be wishful thinking.)

And my sister shows up. She is my last hope. She is dressed well and is thin. Clearly affluent. She is composed. Self-contained and reserved. In charge of herself.

And I try to tell her that I have nobody and nothing and no way to help myself. That I need her assistance. I ask her could she please put aside her feelings for me and help me? I think I may try to hug her.

She looks at me. Says something or another, constituting a refusal. And she walks away. The last thing I see is her back, walking away. I panic. I run after her. I try to find her. She is my last hope. And she is gone.

I think I try to find my mother. To tell her. I think this is so. And there is nothing at all there. No help from anybody. My aloneness and my dependency, with no one there to help me is all I feel. I am desperate and I am afraid.

At some point, I think, whether before or after the dream I am not sure, M has opened the door and announced to my sleeping self that he is leaving for work. I do not respond and he shuts the door.

That is a custom we have. I become distressed if he does not wake me to say goodbye. He wakes me to say goodbye and gives me a kiss. And I always wake up and kiss him back.

Later as I awaken, I have dread. I do not want to awake. I will do anything rather than awake. I do not want to face that I am alone. All of this work I have to do here in this house, and in the other property I bought I must handle myself. I am incapable of doing it. Of arranging it. I am completely over my head. I will die here alone in the house. There is nobody to care for me in this small city where I live. I am all alone.

(As I look back at this reading through it, I think of my mother all alone in her house at the end. My sister has turned her back on her and left her alone. And she was truly incapable of taking care of herself. She truly could not handle what she had to do. And there was nobody there to help her. Until I came. I am perplexed as to why I would put myself in her place. If indeed I did so.)

I am feeling throughout this as without capacity at all to negotiate anything, to work through or solve anything. There is no future at all. Just helplessness.

What am I to do? How can I stay here in this city for the rest of my life with nothing to do and nowhere to go and nothing and nobody that attracts me? Alone. After everything I have been through I cannot believe I am alone. Here. And this will be the end.

So I get up, finally. Only because I have to go to the bathroom. And I do need coffee.

And walking down the hall I decide. I will fool and trick M. I will act like everything is OK. So that he will help me fix this house and the other one. I will trick and fool him so that he goes with me to the new BIG CITY. And maybe there I will trick and fool him so that he helps me remodel a new home. So I can live in a BIG CITY and not be so alone.

I will plot and I will plan and I will deceive. I will be in charge. I am in charge. (And as I read this, I see my sister.)

So that M will help me get to a place where I can live the rest of my life and and least have a life. Alone. Because my son is gone. And M will be gone.

And because it cannot end like this. I will not let it.

++++

What happened with M last night is this: He came home exhausted and in pain. I brought up my son.

He was disgusted by my son's attitude and choices.

I asked him if he would still help my son. The idea of bringing myself into some arrangement to teach him construction and remodeling skills, and letting him live in a house that I buy, if he works.

M answered something like this: You just told me that SON is blowing everything off. How can two things happen at once? If he is blowing everything else how can I turn him into a constructive, responsible person. If he does not want this. I am not a magician?

Me: But you said you would.

M: Yes, and I will, but who knows when and if SON will decide that he wants to live differently. That is not in my hands or yours to decide.

If I am still able and can work, I will help him. But who knows if I will even be around.

Me: Now I know the truth about our relationship. Everything is day by day. Month by month. Whether or not you will be around. Whether you decide to go back to your wife.

M: My wife? What does that have to do with anything? I meant, around, as in the sense of alive or dead.

I cannot control when I die. Can you? If son decides to change while I am alive and functioning well enough to work I will help him.

I was not talking about our relationship about which I do not have reservations. I am talking about SON. What can I do if he does not want to?

Me: Everything for you is about whether you decide or what you want. I do not want to live based upon your day to day decisions.

So we did not talk for the rest of the night. I was despondent and felt as if I had nothing at all.

And I recognize that I feel as if I am no longer an adult.

I feel all alone. I feel I have no one. I have no Mother. I have no sister. I do not have myself, even. I am no longer capable. I can no longer do things. I do not even drive, hardly. Just in the City. I have achieved so much. I have been free and independent. I have as if traveled the world. Alone with a small child.

And it has ended with nothing. Completely unequipped to live as an independent and competent woman or mother.

+++

I will get to your post in a little while, Cedar. I am glad you are back.

 

[Copabanana]

I still have not gotten around to replying to your post, Cedar. I tried twice and they got erased but will try again. Before I do I wanted to write a few thoughts about M and I before I lose them. I need to write the truth as I feel it right now.

Cedar, you write about our becoming the heroes of our own lives, of coming to our own rescue. Of owning the strength that is already ours.

So when I imagine this, and feel myself a hero, I feel so heroic, so powerful, so beautiful, I think to myself, what do I need M for as baggage, such a powerful and heroic and beautiful person as I am?

Now even I know that I am going overboard, that I have been carried away by this fantasy of my own power and perfection. Of course, this is the same person who the moment before felt as if she could do nothing, that her life was over because of incapacity. Clearly the truth lies somewhere in between.

Because while I am believing I am now wonderful and powerful, and why in heaven's name would I want to be held back by somebody like M, a mere human, I am afraid.

While heroic in his way, M is only mortal, and humbled and broken by life. Not powerful in means. A relatively small man in stature (though certainly not in presence or in substance or in will) who doesn't even speak English by G-d.

Not soaring and golden as am I in this grand and grandiose moment. But I am afraid.

I am afraid, even within my grandiosity, as the grand and powerful Me that I have become.

I do not know how to be in a relationship as a powerful, whole and complete person. Does one need a true hero to stand by ones side? Need I look for President Obama or Robert Redford. I have never been a hero before nor do I know any heroes.

So the question is this: Do I love M or need him? Can I still have him or want him when I am a hero? How will I be as a hero? Will I still be me? Will I still be afraid sometimes? Will being a hero make me love M more or less? Want him more or less?

I am thinking these past few hours that M and I might have to confront some of the insecurity in our relationship, together confront the vulnerabilities and solve them. The insecurities have given me a place to hide out. I am the barrier here. Not he. I give myself a way to cop out of the commitment, when and if I want to. Divorce. Marriage. Money. That we are strong enough to do it. And face the meaning and the consequences if we do not.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

In absolute, abject need, desperation and dependency. Utterly in need of help. With no one and nothing. Pacing from anxiety at my abject aloneness and need.

I am an adult but I think I am much younger than I am now (but that could be wishful thinking.)

And my sister shows up. She is my last hope. She is dressed well and is thin. Clearly affluent. She is composed. Self-contained and reserved. In charge of herself.

And I try to tell her that I have nobody and nothing and no way to help myself. That I need her assistance. I ask her could she please put aside her feelings for me and help me? I think I may try to hug her.

She looks at me. Says something or another, constituting a refusal. And she walks away. The last thing I see is her back, walking away. I panic. I run after her. I try to find her. She is my last hope. And she is gone.

I think I try to find my mother. To tell her. I think this is so. And there is nothing at all there. No help from anybody. My aloneness and my dependency, with no one there to help me is all I feel. I am desperate and I am afraid.

At some point, I think, whether before or after the dream I am not sure, M has opened the door and announced to my sleeping self that he is leaving for work. I do not respond and he shuts the door.

Ouch. That's a terrible dream, Copa. What do you think it means? Remember that dream I had about my hair? It meant exactly the opposite of what it seemed.

Exactly the opposite.

It turned out that my interpretation of the dream helped me understand where I was in my decision to heal. That I was refusing my mother's insistence that she could give me my legitimate self, the self that I am.

The meaning of the dream came clear over the following week. Remember when I posted about that?

Could this dream be the same?

Could one of the figures in the dream represent your son? Could the figure you believe to be yourself represent the way you imagine your son to be feeling?

What are the words the sister uses to justify refusing you? Whose eyes is she looking out of, Copa?

Why does she turn away?

And walking down the hall I decide. I will fool and trick M. I will act like everything is OK. So that he will help me fix this house and the other one. I will trick and fool him so that he goes with me to the new BIG CITY. And maybe there I will trick and fool him so that he helps me remodel a new home. So I can live in a BIG CITY and not be so alone.

I will plot and I will plan and I will deceive. I will be in charge. I am in charge. (And as I read this, I see my sister.)

So that M will help me get to a place where I can live the rest of my life and and least have a life. Alone. Because my son is gone. And M will be gone.

I think you would not have to trick M, Copa.

I hated D H when our kids were younger and in trouble. He hated me, too. Somehow, we stayed together but I think that was mostly because D H would not leave. He let me do what I wanted. He did all kinds of things to show me he loved me, but I just didn't care so much about him or about us, anymore. Because the kids were in trouble, bad trouble. I was so miserable, so confused and hurt and felt such a failure that I saw him, saw my choice of him, in that light.

Could those kinds of feelings be part of what you are feeling for M?

M is not with you now because he needs you to be here in this country, Copa. He is there, after all this number of years, because he loves you. If he were not working, and working hard, I would think differently. But he does work. He could have left you at any time. He did not.

He chooses you, Copa.

You have a responsibility to yourself and to M to understand the underpinnings of your primary relationship. But...what if you were simply to go to dinner together, instead? That is pretty much what D H did when he insisted we have a drink together, alone, every night at 5:30. It was less "Let's talk about all this deep stuff we fell into." than it was "Let's have a couple of laughs. Let's just do that; let's just blow it all off for tonight."

And it turns out to have been a really good strategy for getting through impossible things like children in danger and mothers whose hearts and spirits are broken with the pain of it.

All at once, we were just there together. No pressure; no plan. lately we have been listening to that Johnny Cash song about "How high's the water, mama? Three feet high and rising." The water keeps getting higher and there is no way out and all the couple can do is note what's underwater, now.

That seems hilarious to us when we just can't imagine what to do next and things are falling apart left and right.

It seems to me that you will learn that M is there for and because of, you. He could live anywhere, Copa. He lived on his own before he knew you. Remember the song, Halleluiah? Love is not a victory march; it's a cold and it's a broken halleluiah....

I am sad that you spent last night alone, Copa. Even when I hate my D H, I love it that he is there in my bed. Even though he is thinner now and losing his hair, I am just so happy he is here with me. When our daughter and grands were here? I was so fickle, Copa! D H was totally cramping my style and I got so mad at him!

Ha!

Now they are gone and I am sad and D H is like, "Whew."

Things will be so much better away from your home, Copa. That is how it was for me. There were too many too painful memories, too many failures, in my house.

I am glad we sold that house we built.

SWOT said the same thing too Copa, about loving M. Men understand that we are grieving; they know more about what we think than we know. They love us Copa, more than we know. Our love for them is somehow all bound up in the kids. Theirs for us is ~ I don't know. It has something to do with comfort, and with waking up together, and with eating food together.

Cedar

I wanted to add too that D H and I decide to get divorced all the time.

We say: "That's it!" And we mean it.

Oh, that D H.

:O)

Love is not a victory march, right? But it doesn't have to be a cold and broken anything. There is comfort in those eyes, Copa. M has witnessed for you; he has watched you suffer and seen you break.

I hate that about my D H too, sometimes.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

So when I imagine this, and feel myself a hero, I feel so heroic, so powerful, so beautiful, I think to myself, what do I need M for as baggage, such a powerful and heroic and beautiful person as I am?

It could be different for you Copa, but when I feel like that, I understand how afraid I am. It is humbling for me, to know that. But once I acknowledge it, I can take a small step, just a small step. It doesn't even matter what direction, sometimes. I try to stay open, and to do what is in front of me to do.

Sometimes, it's nothing at all.

This way of posting about M is something new for you, Copa. It is always best ~ and you know this ~ to see and cherish others as we would wish to be seen and cherished.

Holding you now, Copa, in my thoughts and prayers.

You will come through this time strong and whole. These are feelings from before; this is old trauma, Copa. Sit with it, lean into it, let it wash over and through you.

There is nothing to be afraid of, in this time.

You aren't alone with it. We all are right here.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

This way of posting about M is something new for you, Copa.

Thank you for responding, Cedar. I feel ashamed.

I think I am afraid that I will leave him if I get strong, if after all I am a real hero. Indeed, my Mother and sister would.

Also, I think that must be because I wanted so to run away when I was a child, but had nobody and nowhere to go. I must fear that the second I feel any power at all, that I will bolt, or must do so, even if I do not want to.

M is a good man. A flawed man. But a good man.

While as a child or a young woman I might have dreamed of a hero or a prince to rescue me, I would not allow it or maybe nobody came. Or maybe I was afraid.

I am not a person who at the heart of things ranks people. But I look on myself in a very judgmental and cruel way. It seems that I may not want to be a member of a club that wants me. And it seems as if M may want me as a member, at least sometimes. And of course if I turn into a hero, I could now join any club at all.

What I am saying here is that all of this is difficult. We are changing as we speak. The hardest part is how we look on ourselves. It is hard to figure out what is true. Especially if we are sometimes appraising and judging through the eyes of others who we have internalized within us, like mothers and sisters and the desperate and powerless little girls we were.

Thank you Cedar.

 

[nerfherder]

Dreams are funny things. The ones that I both hate and need are the ones that, unbeknownst to me, tear down the "do not pass! Landmines ahead!" signs and barricades I put up over the years.

They happen when I need them to, and lord knows I need them to keep happening, because I can't expand my boundaries if I don't know where they are.

Runa is the word for "mystery." That place in the dark you don't know exists, that gives you the feeling of mystery, of "something is there and I need to bring light inside it so I can see." Sometimes it hurts, daily, as with Prometheus whose liver is torn out daily for the transgression of bringing humans fire. But we grow that danged liver back, light the torch again, and walk into the darkened pathway in the labyrinth of our past, present, future, so we can see what was once not known. Or what was hidden in the closet of Runa, hoping we'd never have to see it again.

Being strong is not the same as running from weakness. I left DEX, as hard as it was to do, because in large part of the behavior of the family I never met. The ones who thought it was ok to "go along with things" even when those things carried rifles and wore armbands and told them they were subhuman.

He is very much a "go along with things" kind of person, and I couldn't be part of that kind of life anymore. My life here is hard - I'm not even sure I could have done this 30 years ago. But now, with nothing much to lose, I can be here. And I knew I had to be stronger, and he wasn't going to be helping me do that. When I started on my current religious path, it scared him because - and this was born out over the course of a decade - I might change.

News Bulletin: We all change. It's what we are.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Runa is the word for "mystery." That place in the dark you don't know exists, that gives you the feeling of mystery, of "something is there and I need to bring light inside it so I can see." Sometimes it hurts, daily, as with Prometheus whose liver is torn out daily for the transgression of bringing humans fire. But we grow that danged liver back, light the torch again, and walk into the darkened pathway in the labyrinth of our past, present, future, so we can see what was once not known. Or what was hidden in the closet of Runa, hoping we'd never have to see it again.

This is fascinating, nerfherder. I am going to look up the closet of Runa. I have never heard the word for that feeling.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I think I am afraid that I will leave him if I get strong, if after all I am a real hero. Indeed, my Mother and sister would.

Also, I think that must be because I wanted so to run away when I was a child, but had nobody and nowhere to go. I must fear that the second I feel any power at all, that I will bolt, or must do so, even if I do not want to.

This could be true, Copa. But it could be equally true that the depth of your feelings for M frightens you. I think the answer is to be our best selves, Copa. Life is not risk free. We both have learned that terrible truth repeatedly. But being afraid to risk, being afraid to go naked and vulnerable and beautiful in our vulnerability is not a guarantee of anything but aloneness.

I found this prayer online this morning. I love it. It resonates strongly within me in this time. Here it is for you, Copa.

:O)

Bless my eyes to see goodness;
bless my words to speak kindness.
Bless my heart to feel compassion.
Bless my soul, to radiate love.

Isn't that a beautiful thing, Copa?

Cedar

 

[nerfherder]

This is fascinating, nerfherder. I am going to look up the closet of Runa. I have never heard the word for that feeling.

Cedar

I added the word "closet." Runa exists as its own mystery. It's one of those interesting things that the Nordic myth stories have archetypes which work pretty well in one kind of search for self-exploration. One book, "The Well and the Tree" (may no longer be in print) explores the stories around these myths.

 

[Copabanana]

Nerf, I looked for The Well and the Tree and found it. It cost $250. I will check the University Library near me. And keep looking for a cheaper one.

Runa is the word for "mystery." That place in the dark you don't know exists, that gives you the feeling of mystery, of "something is there and I need to bring light inside it so I can see."

This is beautiful.

I think it is your words that make it such. To feel and see the moment when something that is there...becomes the mystery, that which I want to dedicate myself to see.

Prometheus whose liver is torn out daily for the transgression of bringing humans fire

This too. You might remember that my adopted son was born with Hepatitis B. I am struggling to find a way to understand Prometheus' punishment in a way that illuminates my own. I woke this morning with dread, somehow regretting the strength and focus and relief I had found last night. While I did not birth my son, I gave him a life. I seem to tear out my own liver daily that the life I gave myself is being destroyed and I cannot help him. I cannot make him see to take care of himself. Once he was no longer with me, my son could not or chose not to care for himself, his life. The thought I might punish myself for the rest of my own life frightens me.

But we grow that danged liver back, light the torch again, and walk into the darkened pathway in the labyrinth of our past, present, future, so we can see what was once not known.

Beautiful, too. From this I have hope. Each day brings the possibility of new light, and new life, I hope. Except my son's liver past a point will not regenerate. Once there is cancer or cirrhosis.

News Bulletin: We all change. It's what we are.

Thank you Nerfherder.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Sometimes it hurts, daily, as with Prometheus whose liver is torn out daily for the transgression of bringing humans fire.

Pierre Tielhard de Chardin names love "Fire". An interesting take on Prometheus' punishment, and maybe, on the true nature of the crime?

"Someday, after mastering the wind, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love, and then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered Fire."

That's Pierre. I read him first in Frank Herbert's The Jesus Incident.

Here is another. This would be from The Ascension Factor, I think.

"I will this morning climb up in spirit to the high places, bearing with me the hopes and miseries of my mother; and there, upon all that in the world of human flesh is now about to be born or to die beneath the rising sun, I will call down the Fire."

That's Pierre, too. I see what we are doing, here on this thread, in this light. As we work through what is, as we figure out what really happened, we will free ourselves into compassion and then, into an agape kind of love, I think. First, for ourselves; and then, for all of us. Not so much because we know what it is that happened, but because there is an essential mystery in what happens, and in that it happens just as it does.

That is a "runa" feeling. I don't know what it looks like or how to describe it, but it feels like it is there in the darkness somewhere, and that it is a living, moving, true thing.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

https://www.google.com/search?q=well+and+the+Tree&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=The+Well+and+the+Tree

This seems to be a copy of The Well and the Tree, Copa.

Or maybe, it is a review which can give a feel of the book. I am not sure. You will see what I mean if you download.

It will download as a PDF file. Amazon has an excellent review of the book in which the reviewer writes that the most striking aspect of the book is the Germanic/Celtic view of time as circular, not linear. (We believe past, present, future. The view presented in this book, according to the reviewer, is of time as a circular event, where past prepares future and present...and then I lost the meaning. According to the review I read, this ancient Celtic/Germanic view of time describes everything ~ everything ~ as moving and connected and responsive. Like a tree, with it's roots buried and unseen, and its leaves and branches and trunk visible.) There are three wells, each different. The question, in the PDF file, was why Bauschatz condensed the wells into one. Very difficult reading. The book seems only to be available in hardcover, and cost went up to $1800 for a used copy in excellent condition. The book was written in 1982.

How extraordinary a thing to have come across!

Thanks, nerfherder. How did you learn of it?

Do you know what each of the three wells represents? One is magical. The water in it flows upward and outward.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

This is my third try to respond to this post. I included some quotes from the post just before, too.

First I want to say something important, all the while afraid that if I linger, I will lose this response as well.

My thinking and my control over my sister as I hold her within me has changed substantially. About 10 days ago I looked at her house for the last time. While I wanted to look again, I caught myself. Don't cheat. I did not have the urge to look again.

The remarkable thing is this: Her image within me has changed and settled within me. She is no longer herself as she has been these last 25 years: The Matriarch. The Professional. The Woman in Control of All. I recoil and become afraid as I type this and I am racing and cannot wait to be done. I need a new paragraph to make distance so that I can get in touch with the less scary internalized sister that she has become.

For at least the last 9 days, my sister when I think of her has settled into herself as a child. Much more manageable to deal with, for me. I think of her way less. She stays in her place. She does not threaten me. I am careful to stay away from her so as to not get pinched or tattled upon.

I am amazed by this as I reflect upon it and am wondering how and why she receded. What was it that tamed her? Was it an insight or an interpretation or could it be "don't cheat"?

Is it that I decided to no longer permit myself to give myself away to her? To not give her a power that was mine? That each time I looked at her stupid house I diminished my power and siphoned it out of me into her? I mean, I know that she did not receive my power. But I gave it to her from me. That is what is important. That I stopped it.

I am even able to reflect upon her, if I do not think, as a benign child, and leave it there. In the past. As having nothing in the world to do with me now.

As I see it now, I did marvelously well as a mom at home ~ beautifully! But when the feedback was no longer bright, healthy children learning and growing well, I collapsed into FOO reality. Because, knives at the ready, they were waiting to pounce, those old belief systems.

Yes, I know.

You can save her now, Copa; but you have to not give up on her. The intensity of the feelings now is an echo. How, in all the hells that ever were, did that little girl who was you survive it when she knew nothing about the world, or that she would escape the mother one day?

This is beautiful. Beautiful but chilling. How sad for us.

Oh, I am remembering now to tell you about the Johnny Cash song about the flood. I found on Youtube a TV interview from 1955 or so. Very old. He was so young and raw. But confident, poised.

I listened to the Johnny Cash song about the flood and pictured you and D H together. What an acknowledgment of a relationship and choosing each other and honoring what you have together in spite of what is being lost and destroyed apart from the two of you. There is a choice in that song to own as important each other, to let go what is beyond control. And at each foot of encroaching flood water they reaffirm it, they reaffirm each other, together. There is never a sense of renunciation as unimportant that which goes under. Only a joyous affirmation of the two together.

M does not understand why I am at the computer all day and night. Last night he brought in the sheets that I had washed and he dropped them on the bed next to me. An hour later he came back. The bed was still unmade. Quickly I jumped up and we made the bed together and laid down.

When I put my hand on his shoulder he said something like this: I was tired. I brought the sheets in hoping you would make the bed, so I could lie down. You are at the computer night and day.

Me: Is that a huge crime?

M: Night and day and day and night. The computer.

I kept quiet. I do not know how to explain in a way that he understands. There really are no words. I hate this about M, when he gives me a test, and a fail. I hate pop quizzes and I resent my life being set up as a stupid quiz to pass or fail. He could have helped me make the bed right from the start. He chose it. Not me.

These changes in her seem to have occurred either after her marriage or after my father died...after her last marriage,

This is what I think about your sister, Cedar. With her last marriage it seems that she acquired the means to be secure and to feel secure. I am talking about money here. There was always the desire in her to feel she had more than the rest of you. To feel and be more powerful. Because of her relatively poorer circumstances, until the last marriage she had to express that desire furtively and covertly.

Many years ago I read a book called The Powers of the Weak. It laid out the powers that oppressed peoples used against their oppressors. Your sister used those covert powers as long as she lacked the means to dominate.

My conclusion is that there is something the matter with my sister. She hates me like a green eyed snake. If I were dead, she would do everything in her power to destroy my memory or change my story. She is behaving as though I am dead, now.

While I do see her as a snake, I see this somewhat differently. I think your sister has a strong need, as does my sister, and M's evil sister, to dominate and control. I think she always did. But she could not impose her will before. She felt at a disadvantage. Now she does not.

M's sister Mercedes believes their evil sister always wanted to have more, to be more, to be above her siblings and that is why she stole the house from the parents and siblings, and took control of the household to banish the sister who had been helping her parents. She banished that sister as an Empress would banish a servant. She plotted and manipulated and pressured her family to achieve her will. Because she believed she was entitled to do this by her specialness, by her title as special (think entitled) which she bestows on herself.

This is your sister. This is my sister. They believe they deserve more. It lies covert and buried within them until life events give them their moment to reveal their true selves. And they do. Your sister did.

It was supposed to be that each of the "sisters" would be loyal to one another in a business and in a personal sense

This nauseates me. Read this again Cedar. Loyal to one another in a business and personal sense. This is pure use. Pure instrumental use. For what I can get. I scratch your back. You scratch mine. Primitive use.

It echoes the fundamentalist Christian concept of no divorce in the marriage she entered into the last time

She would never have entered a marriage for life with a poor man, would she hav? She wants and lifetime guarantee. No returns allowed.

It cannot be just my parents' house. Surely my sister could buy her own house. It is almost as though she wants to be king. That is the feel of it, in every way. And if we haven't noticed that she is king now, then she does and says the strangest things. That part, I absolutely believe. The part about wanting to be king, I mean.

Yes is exactly it. Your sister always wanted to be King. To be worshiped. Adored. With absolute powers. For life. She wants her children to inherit her powers and her domain. She set about to do it. And she did. All the rest of it, is a ruse.

My sister and my mother both seem to have developed a thing about intelligence. Who is "smart". My sister is forever harping about my mother being so "smart". (As an aside: My sister has never been known for her "smarts". I don't know how that fits in here, but I am sure that it does.)

This sickens me too, because my family had a version of this. My Aunt Rose my mother's sister became very, very wealthy. Many, many millions of dollars. In a way she had a personality like our sisters but she had the power in the world to claim it. She could be not just King but Kingmaker. She gained the power to buy powerful people if she wanted through her money. It always bothered my mother that she did not help her. My mother died with well over a million dollars of her own. But she still coveted a piece of her sister's money.

Back to "smart." To my Aunt and my mother, who cared less about it, of the grandchildren I was the one that was designated "smart." All the kids were smart put somehow I got the prize. How do you determine who is the smartest of a group of smart people? Who in life cares? But this aunt did.

The thing that infuriated me was this: I did become highly educated. I went to the best universities and I paid for it by working and loans. I educated myself while estranged from my family completely. '

But still my Aunt wanted to claim it. I told you, she say. I told you you were smart. As by her blessing me as smart with her wand, by her staff, she had made it so and could claim it for herself. How hateful. At least that was how it felt.

This was the same Aunt that used to tell me how grateful I should be that for my stepfather that beat me in the head and in the body to bring blood and bruises and crashed my head against walls. And that was the least of it compared to what he did to my spirit and my hope.

my mother was telling me about how her feelings for the disabled grand had changed, her rationale was that she should not have to spend time with people who were not "smart", who were not entertaining.

YUCK. Another Queen. How she looks down at the rest of us PLEBES. I am sorry Cedar. I do not know how you became who you are. I guess I am equally mystified about myself. How we can climb out of this to be real people.

I am wondering what would be the choice point? When did we choose to go our way and not theirs? Or was it chosen for us? By that I mean did we just receive enough stuff of love or care in our development, by accident, that we were not stuck in the muck as were they?

I want to mention something now that I have been wondering about. You have mentioned more than once that as a young woman you could be arrogant. The thing is, I was as a young and younger woman described as and accused of being arrogant. I am not in touch with what it was about me and my attitudes that were such.

If you want I would be curious to know more, so as to try to learn a bit of what might have been behind this, in me.

it could be the naming and creation of perennial victims (my brothers and me) to bolster the self.

In a way, that is what happened to David Peltzer. (A Child Called It)

That would mean everyone else has to be a victim, and has to be victimized and cannot be anything but victims. That would be a heady power to believe you held.

I think the key is power. In your sister I do not believe she seeks victims. That would be a different thing.

I think she does not care if there are victims. She is indifferent to the suffering she causes. It does not enter into her thinking at all. She does not see it. She did not cause it. Whatever suffering there might be is the responsibility of the victim, and proof that they deserve whatever situation they find themselves in. Because they are victims. They are inferior. They are not Queen.

It is all circular. She is queen because she is. She deserves what she has because she is Queen and by rights all is hers. Nothing ever rightfully belonged to anybody else. If they have feelings about it, that only demonstrates their inferiority. Anyway, it has nothing but nothing to do with her. To her your home in which she took pictures is already rightfully hers, whether or not she claims it. Get over it, Cedar. Get in step. She is Queen.

gathering with your fundamentalist Christian cohorts to call down a ring of thorns or fire or whatever it was would be just a great thing to do.

Do you suppose that is it?

Personally, I do not she avenges herself on you. I think she prays for you, and in that way pins you down to a mat like an insect in a frame in a collection. I think I might prefer the ring of fire.

Like that mean little girl in that show about life on the prairie with that handsome Little Joe Cartwright whose real name I can't remember but, woo!!

Nell, I think. Michael Landon. Not so cute, to me. My Adonis is Anthony Bourdain on CNN.

It was a lovely fantasy. I am happy that I did that, that I tried to see them and myself like that. You never do know. It could have come true. That it didn't doesn't mean it was wrong to believe in it.

Cedar, you needed the dinners to create yourself. It was never for them. They were mere play actors in your creation of yourself and your family. Actors that were paid scale and that you can choose not to recall. They are only as important as you make them. Or allow them to be. They can go to oblivion any moment you decide that you no longer need them.

My only sadness is that when you no longer need them you will no longer need us anymore.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Thank you for responding, Cedar. I feel ashamed.

When I post shaming things (and sometimes I post them because they are shaming) I am taking the opportunity to heal, Copa. However we feel is how we feel. As we post about these belief systems that we can hardly believe we experience, we bring them into consciousness.

And then we track down the teacher, Copa.

And then, we confront and heal the woundedness responsible for the things we know are so not worthy of us that we wonder where they have come from.

For me, those feelings, those areas of intense certainty that cannot possibly be correct based on my sense of integrity, of right and wrong and kindness and hope. But you didn't brush it under the rug, Copa.

It takes great courage to do that. We are anonymous here in one way, but the temptation to present ourselves as surer, as more certain than we are is strong, even here.

I find you courageous, Copa.

You are doing so well.

I am, too. SWOT is flying. So, we'll just celebrate that with her until we get there, too.

Cedar

 

[nerfherder]

https://www.google.com/search?q=well+and+the+Tree&ie=utf-8&oe=utf-8#q=The+Well+and+the+Tree

This seems to be a copy of The Well and the Tree, Copa.

Or maybe, it is a review which can give a feel of the book. I am not sure. You will see what I mean if you download.

It will download as a PDF file. Amazon has an excellent review of the book in which the reviewer writes that the most striking aspect of the book is the Germanic/Celtic view of time as circular, not linear. (We believe past, present, future. The view presented in this book, according to the reviewer, is of time as a circular event, where past prepares future and present...and then I lost the meaning. According to the review I read, this ancient Celtic/Germanic view of time describes everything ~ everything ~ as moving and connected and responsive. Like a tree, with it's roots buried and unseen, and its leaves and branches and trunk visible.) There are three wells, each different. The question, in the PDF file, was why Bauschatz condensed the wells into one. Very difficult reading. The book seems only to be available in hardcover, and cost went up to $1800 for a used copy in excellent condition. The book was written in 1982.

How extraordinary a thing to have come across!

Thanks, nerfherder. How did you learn of it?

Do you know what each of the three wells represents? One is magical. The water in it flows upward and outward.

:O)

Cedar

Whoa dude. $1800? I have a copy bought new in near-new condition. Paid $50 for it about 10 years ago - it was a private On Demand printing. I do need some major work on The Flexible Flyer (my 25 year old Ford Ranger pickup truck,) I wonder if my copy's worth even half that! I'll have to look into it. There's irresponsible occultniks out there with more money than sense.

How I learned of it - through my personal work in my religious affiliation I was active in a sub-group that concerned dreams and dreaming. (Some very interesting things came out of that work - the kind of thing that defies rational explanations.) The coordinator of that group suggested I find a copy, as it had information relative to the questions I was asking at the time.

A modern, less doctrinal (meaning, internally accurate based on the myths) but fantastic tale which otherwise looks at the myth cycle and Yggdrasil's place in the World is Neil Gaiman's "American Gods." It gives a fairly intense event near the end exploring the idea of Odhinne's hanging himself from the tree for nine days, "Sacrificing self to Self."

My memory being what it is (Kiddo ran roughshod through the executive function wires of my brain, unfortunately) I'll have to review the book - which I should probably do anyway.

There's a world of myth and legend out there (I'm currently reading Caplan's "Legends of the Jews" vol. 1 through 4, thank you gutenberg.org! It was impossible to find a decade ago when I first ran across a neighbor's copy while researching the Judaic myths of Leviathan). These date back to the pre-scientific era, when a sickness of the spirit (today's mental illness, in my opinion) was managed in ways other than as a breakage requiring medical intervention. I don't consider medical intervention a bad thing - but when seeing the body as a breakable machine, and only a breakable machine (think of Skinner's questionable contributions to psychology!) the soul, or spirit, or aspects of Self that defy the limits of the meat wagon it rides, are treated as hindrances or worse, ignored.

These myths, sometimes awkwardly translated into languages other than their origin, are limited by inadequate vocabulary. For example - the word "god" is not universally the same in each culture. The Norse Aesir are not omnipotent beings, the Egyptian Neteru are more akin to personified Platonic Ideals (which explains their sometimes bizarre to us depictions), the Idols venerated in Buddhism and Hinduism are not themselves so much beings as they are images with as much meaning transmitted as objects as the books of the Bible transmit to us with words.

And that's all I can write for now, what with the Four Baby Vikings needing watermelon, attention, and one diaper change.

 

[Copabanana]

This seems to be a copy of The Well and the Tree, Copa.

Or maybe, it is a review which can give a feel of the book. I am not sure. You will see what I mean if you download.

Hi again Cedar and Nerf. I downloaded it. And will print it out. Thank you both.

I will try to read it. I have read some of the structuralists and post-structuralists that the writer cites in the introduction. If this is an academic tome of this ilk, it will be hard going. Thank you both.

And for this, too, Nerf (our paths crossed in the night). I will find it: Caplan's "Legends of the Jews" vol. 1 through 4. Thank you.

COPA

 

[nerfherder]

For at least the last 9 days, my sister when I think of her has settled into herself as a child. Much more manageable to deal with, for me. I think of her way less. She stays in her place. She does not threaten me. I am careful to stay away from her so as to not get pinched or tattled upon.

Sounds like you did a grand job of your own Nine Days, seeking to sacrifice self to Self.

 

[BusynMember]

Ok. I'm no scholar and can't join in the intellectual part of this discussion. But copa I can tell you what happened to your sister in your mind because it is exactly what happened to my siblings in my own head.

When you stop engaging somebody in any way at all they seem less real and by that token non threatening to our world. We remember how we were treated but it is muted and almost seems cartoonist. Their vile lies and games don't matter any more than a stranger's would because they are no longer issues we deal with. Yes, people can be issues.

Keep up operation oblivion. I barely think about my siblings anymore. Just when I post about them here.

I am now the owner of my mind, my past, my memories, and my opinion of myself. They get no more input.

I am free. If I knew I'd feel this good earlier...better late than never. Good to see ya here. Nerf.