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

[Scent of Cedar *]

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.

Where is everyone, this morning? Ew. How embarrassing. I will just respond to myself, then.

:O)

***

So, in discussing yesterday's work here on the site with D H last night, I came to understand that the places I am able to stand, the places I am able to touch for instruction and direction where my sister is concerned, those two incidents have given me a kind of desperately needed clarity. They are true things, and they tell me who I am, and they tell me something true about my sister.

I am posting about one thing that I know about my mother. I found the emotional trigger last night in discussion with D H.

Good news: D H agrees that doing what I am doing here on the site has resulted in change. He was here when my sister called. He has witnessed the difference in the way I processed that. It did not require processing.

So far, anyway.

It is good to have a witness to that, too.

I feel clearer, but it is good to have witness.

The incident: Our daughter was newly born. I was not raised in any particular religion. My mother is a lapsed Catholic: strictly raised Catholic. The running joke is: "No, I don't believe. But if I should begin to die, call a priest." D H and family are Catholic, of course; they are Italian from Italy during the time of D H life.

So, I wanted to baptize my child.

And I had seen the priest of course. And I knew the baby would wear a white baptismal gown. But the Godfather had not been filmed yet in that time. There was no internet. There was nowhere to go to learn how to do this: What do I wear? What is a godparent? What does D H wear. What do I serve at the gathering after. Is there a gathering after? Are there invitations sent out to baptisms ~ oh, you cannot imagine the things I did not know, or how very much I wanted to do this correctly for the sake of my child and my young husband (I was very much in love with D H back then. I love him, now. That is something richer and different than what I felt for him, then. What I felt for him then was all-encompassing. :O)

D H said last night, when I was telling him about this set point: "Why didn't you ask my mom?" Well, of course. But that did not even occur to me. I was still so new to my relationship with D H mom, and there had already been so many strangenesses with my family of origin.

D H and I did not have a real wedding, of course.

I would never wear the beautiful gown or host the dinner and the dance and have all the wonder of it. I knew that, of course. I had always known it.

But D H family did not get that part about me.

How could I tell D H mom when I was still loyal to my own mother, when I was still trying to hide who and how it was and how it had always been, with us.

So...I asked my own mother. What do I do? How do I do this? What do I serve? Which are the appropriate colors? Should everything be white? Is meat allowed?

And she wouldn't tell me.

And after the baptism (and all I could do is the best I could do but I didn't even know that phrase, then), and after the baptism ~ and I don't think my parents even came. Strangely, I had not thought about that at the time. We will be going through that today, too. What that was like, to never have a mother though D H had his before whom I stumbled and stumbled and did not have a mother of my own.

You know what? I am physically beautiful. You would be surprised. If for no other reason than that, you would think my mother would have been there for me in these matters but she just never was. And I suppose I ~ I don't know. She just never was and there is a taste of shame there but I was doing the things that were mine to do and I was doing them so alone and I didn't even know the difference. That there were mothers and daughters who celebrated their babies. D H mom would teach me that over time.

But I did not know even that, then.

Anyway. Here is the thing we are exploring and naming and having the shame and the anger in it, today: So, my mother would not help me; would not advise, did not attend, it seems. I believe that to be true. I believe no one from my family of origin attended the baptisms of either of my children.



I digress, getting there more quickly by the winding back roads than I believed possible.

And after it was over, I was talking to my mother on the phone. And she wanted to know how everything had gone, I suppose. So, I told her. And this is what she said, and this is where we will be working today until I find a set point, a place to stand up.

No quotes because I don't remember the exact words.

Something like: When you asked me how to do this, I wondered why you didn't ask your own mother. Then I realized, I am her mother.

And she thought that was really funny, my mother.

So that is where we are working, today.

And that is the incident, out of all the incidents in all of my life with this woman who is my mother, that will give me my mother and a place to stand in the event of her death or her showing up at my door, whichever comes first.

At this point in my work today, I am thinking a kick in the ass would be appropriate in either case.

Pardon me.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Deep, cleansing breath.

Center.

"I never did mind, about the little things."

Smile.

Cedar

Not my real name. Not the name I was, then.

I could not do this, if my name here were the name I am, were the name I was, in that terrible, terrible time.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

And I did not even know, until we read the Certificate's of Baptism, that my child had been baptized as a bastard because D H and I had not been married in the Church.

I did not even know that.

And it says that terrible word, right on her Baptism paper.

Cedar

There were so many things I did not know how to know.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Okay.

Here is what I know about that. I did the right thing for my child, for my children. Just in case. Just in case it was true and there was such a thing as Hell.

They both were baptized.

And they were safe, in that way that might matter.

Just in case.

And I would do every bit of what I did, then. I would do it, again.

Just in case, for their sakes, I would do those same things again, forever.

But I might have chosen Jewish.

But I didn't even know anything about Jewish then, either.

I did the right thing, the correct thing.

Good.

Good, good, good for me and for us.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Okay.

So, I went back to the "To Tell the Truth" thread. I knew there would be something there for me, but I didn't know what it was. It was Headlight Mom's comment, made on a different thread altogether and that I had quoted on that thread, that I needed. I did not know that was it until, rereading that thread, I saw it ~ saw her comment, again:

"Lest I grow cold about him or let his ugly behaviors devour me. Sometimes, it's the only gratitude I have for him. So...I'll take it."

Again, that was Headlight's Mom. I don't know whether she is even here with us any longer, but I have never forgotten what she posted that day.

And that was the thing I needed: Gratitude

"Lest I grow cold...or let his ugly behaviors devour me."

Always, always I need to remember, need to keep the beacon of it right there in front of me, where I am going and why and how I want to be when I get there, when I am done.

Gratitude.

It will make all the difference, every time.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

That there were mothers and daughters who celebrated their babies.

I was in the hospital for three days when I had my first baby. D H family came to see us, and to see this new person who had come into their family. Even if I left them, even if D H and I were divorced, this baby he and I had made and given birth to, would be theirs, would be their baby and their person they loved no matter what.

My mother did not come to the hospital where I had my baby. Neither did my father, of course.

She worked right down the street.

And I did not know how that changed my experience of my first baby's birth until my own daughter had her first baby. It meant so much to me that she wanted me, there. But she wanted the baby's father there, too. And I was (and we were) so appalled at who the father was, and at how any of this could have happened to any of us that I said that if he were there for the birth, then D H and I would come after to see our daughter and first grandchild.

If I had it to do over...I don't know. That child is now 22. She is the War of the Grandma's Baklava granddaughter. For her, I would have wanted to have seen her, so new, so brand new a baby. But I did not know that, then. I did not know how I would come to love her in some way that was, and that remains, something that brings all of us together in family in some way I cannot describe, not at all.

I knew that, by the time my second grandchild was born. She came on my birthday. I cut her umbilical. My granddaughter and I were there when my second granddaughter was born.

During daughter's labor? We brought pizza. Enough for the nurses, too. And daughter was so cranky and in labor and so on and hated that we were having pizza, like this was a party or something, that we ate our pizza in the lobby. And then daughter said we had to leave the room. So granddaughter and I went to sleep in the lobby, and that was okay. And they came and got us when our new baby was just born, just born, and I got to cut the umbilical and that was such a nice time we had there together, all of us.

And I am so happy to know that we did that, all of us together.




For my third grandchild ~ a grandson, this time ~ the husband was there for the birth. D H and I came the next day with roses and fried chicken.

We did that same thing, for our fourth grandchild. He is a grandson, too.

When our son had his baby, we were in a faraway state. But we sent lots of money and saw the baby, and the new family that he made all of them, and all of us, into, as soon as we could get there.

So. That is a thing to be so grateful, so wonderfully, thankfully grateful for.

Gratitude.

However we got there, get there we did.

***

Gratitude for my mother. We are on such thin ice, here. The further I go ~ and I get it, that I probably don't remember the times there could be gratitude as well as I remember the hurt places. I described it once. What it feels like to be with my mom. Guarded would pretty much cover it. Gratitude....

Okay. so we were really little and we were all, cousins and everyone, at my grandmother's house, a farm in the country. And it was winter, and all the kids were sleeping in one or two rooms. And my mother came in to check on us or something and she looked so beautiful. And she made sure to give us the part of the blanket with the silk on it, so we would have that part against our faces, that so pretty silky part of the blanket.

So, she loved us, then.

That time.

I wonder whether that is enough to get me through the rest of this.

I am proud of how my mom looks, even now she is a pretty, pretty woman. She wears leggings and cute little leopard print jackets and she has pierced ears, and she is very bright. She can write a story about herself, can put a story together in a sweet and funny way. I saw them, read them at her request, those stories she wrote for her Writer's Group. I like it that she is smart.

I like it that she thinks ~ that I think she thinks, I am...what is the word. Attractive enough that she is proud of that, of how I look and who I am, when I am with her.

I just wish I did not feel sort of like a whore or something at the same time. Like, I have to prove to whichever of her friends it is that I am not what we both know, my mother and me, that true thing that we know.

That is me, hugging myself and being happy about that.



So, here is a dream I had the night before my sister called. Or after she called, or somewhere in there. In one of those little personal coolers, I think they are called "Playboy" coolers ~ at least, that is what the cooler in the dream has printed on it, I have packed a change of clothing. And while I am at work in the dream, a supervisor from a place I really did work, when the kids were still okay and were old enough that I had gone back to work part time, appears and accuses me of having stolen the clothing in my portable ice chest.

And of course, that is the imagery of the heart.

Of the places within me that are still on ice, that I carry around, unexplored and unassimilated. I just got that, reviewing this dream for myself here.

And I say this is not so, because look, there are no pricetags on the clothes. they are my clothes that I brought from home to change into, later.

And the supervisor, who has changed into some ugly caricature of herself, says I did steal them. And everyone, my coworkers, knows I did not steal them. But they are afraid of her too.

And so I am fired, I am going to be fired. And the supervisor is going to press charges for all she is worth; and I know that.

And that's the dream.

***

Okay. so, that's enough gratitude, maybe.

The imagery for my mother, then. The one that will validate my decision to know she has not changed and may not change, and is still dangerous to me. That she is still dangerous to me, how?

My sister's imagery, that set point for her, had to do with how to know she does not love me. My sister has worked very hard, and is doing so well to do the things she knows to do. She is trying very hard to love my mother into family, to just go ahead and create family all around her and love and love her where she is until she is there for real.

Now, why don't I want to do that.

Now, why don't I want to do that, again?

Cedar

Well, maybe it won't come to me, in one day.

I will take a break from it, from this, for now.

 

[Copabanana]

Hi Cedar

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.

While my mother had a nearly lifelong functional alliance with my sister, it had its limits. She withdrew her love completely when angry and would strike and make her very very bad and wrong.

For the most part I was excluded. Had I chosen it? It little matters.They ran with it. I would call my Mother. She would soon have to go to dress herself to meet my sister and her family at a restaurant or go to my sister's house for dinner. I WAS NEVER INVITED. Yes, I was a 4 or 5 hour drive away...but there are places. And what does an invitation cost? They never thought to include me. My mother never invited me to come to her home. She never thought to.

Sometimes I would be favored and I would feel loved. No matter how much I distrusted the source, those golden rays felt oh so good.

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.

I want to say two things here. First, this responsible tone...this yes, I will see that the right thing gets done...this authoritarian tone...is so discordant from all the rest I have heard in your sister's voice or in your responses to her.

The picture I get of your sister, true or not, is girlish, even at 60, and perhaps a bit shallow. Perhaps this comes from the picture of her colluding with your Mom, descending to whatever depths and degradation to get those last crumbs. Of attention. I feel for her. I do.

Second, my sister did that vulnerable Mama bit, too. And it was 100 percent self-serving. A way for her to take control, dominance OVER ASSETS. I do not want to descend into that muck now, but it was icky.

I seem to have a way of swatting my sister out of the way, so to speak. She will do this imperious thing and I will do this little tiny thing. Who prevails, do you thing?

My sister played the mother-is-dying card and my mother was not dying. So even I could see the manipulation in that.

Same exact thing, but I do not right now have the energy to tell the ugly story.

Could it be that your mother began screaming again during your visits because you were the one who would suffer with her?

Yes, I believe you are right. I doubt it sometimes because my Mother was mad and rejecting of me. She targeted me. But after all that was her way, of course. To deal with everything negative that came her way by finding a scapegoat.

Cedar, when I read your understanding of those painful weeks...and how it was...I feel pride in myself. I really stood up. I think you know through your work...how many challenges meet a child of a dying parent. And so many more on top of it in situations such as ours...with ambivalence and conflict...and everything all twisted up.

I never once left...you know I physically left...to go home...to sleep....but I never once let her down. Yes, I made mistakes. But I never turned away. It took real courage. As much that, as love. I am grateful to you for helping me own that.

There were so many hard things. And I did them. The ambulance came here to the house 5 times. She was aspirating. And I was steady, calm and present.

I could fault myself I did not do hospice sooner, but that too I will leave for another day.

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

Thank you, Cedar. For this.

When we believed it was truly a matter of time, that it was altogether too late, all at once it became a matter of gratitude in having known her and sorrow at how it happened; sorrow at how her life had happened to her, and to me, and to all of us.

This is so beautiful Cedar. Unconditional love comes. They are our babies again.

Cedar, I do not know how to stand with my son, right now. After the pain I felt when he said those taunting words identifying with my father. I have not answered the phone for these days and do not know if he called or not. He has not called M's cell.

He must feel rejected by me. And yet, from my view, I cannot accept that piece of him that chooses to victimize me, the knowing and volitional ridiculing of my deepest pain and betrayal.

There must be a way to draw a line on that behavior, not the person. But when we set a limit, of course it affects the person.

I have not attempted to call him because I do not want by my choice to give the appearance of condoning what he said and did. But at the same time I want to call him to embrace what he is to me.

The part that seems to be the hot potato...is embracing the person he is right now. The person he is choosing to be is not particularly appealing to me. Yet I recognize I do not get a vote. Really. At least an election in which I want to participate.

Love him in place, Julie Ann, if you can do it, and let go of outcome.

But Cedar, when that place...involves diminishing of you...of that part of you that is so essential....How do you embrace the child who is victimizing? That is the tough situation that I see stymie so many of us.

I can call him and offer to talk. And risk rejection. And arguing.
I can not call him and wait until he achieves some perspective. Or not.

I do not want what happened with my Mother and I to repeat itself, and I will not let it. There was a breach. She never bothered or tried to heal it. It was more comfortable for her to let it be. While I was held responsible for the separation of so many years...the volition to do so was every bit as much hers.

This is your child's story. Just because it isn't pretty, just because it is horrifically ugly even, that doesn't mean that anyone can make us turn away from our children. Leave him in place

If we stand up...and say...this I will not permit. For now, I will stop this in the way that I can. No. To this.

SWOT sees me as abandoning my son because he does not measure up to my own expectations and needs. Essentially scapegoating him, for the way I was mistreated by my father. There is truth to what she says, I know, but I cannot yet find the way that it is true.

I see myself standing up as a person, as a mother. As if to say, we will not go there. We can go here...and here and a million other places. But there, I will not go with you.

So...I asked my own mother. What do I do? How do I do this? What do I serve? Which are the appropriate colors? Should everything be white? Is meat allowed? And she wouldn't tell me.

I hate her.

You know what? I am physically beautiful. You would be surprised. If for no other reason than that, you would think my mother would have been there for me in these matters but she just never was.

I would not be surprised. I know you are beautiful and it is good that you are claiming that space...which is true.

Now the ugly part: Our mothers really put trips on us about beauty. That is why you are so conflicted, almost ashamed to lay claim to your own.
I am going to say something very harsh. I almost never speak in these terms. It is almost as if there is flavor of your mother pimping you. She wants to own and take profit from your beauty. To take her cut.

How hard for you to own something that you know is such a contested space. She would not let you have your beauty as something lovely and free that was you. Your being. It had to be a "thing" with her, an object of her control...and marketing.

Your beauty, whatever beauty I had, should have been delight and pleasure and joy and glee. It was not. It was shame. It was hiding. Even fear.

Had we been able subjectively to own our beauty it would not be so fearsome to lose it.

My own beauty is much faded. I panic. I look in the mirror and feel horror. Loss of control. Sometimes, I fear that I cannot live at all if I am no longer lovely. I was never a real beauty. But good enough. Into my 50 I was stopped in the street and talked about in terms of my appearance. Not now. I am fat. Gray. I mean iron, dull, gray. Mousy brown gray. My dark chestnut with red and gold hair was that of the angels. I never felt its loveliness. That I lament.

I am divided Sometimes I feel a worthy goal is to let this whole appearance thing go...I mean I already have...but still want to get it back. I feel that is what healthy women do. They age. And it is okay. The extra pounds. The half size dresses. Those shoes. To me this shows strength, and acceptance.

I am my mother's daughter. I cannot let that part of me go. Without a fight So I am trying to eat 600 kcals a day, hoping that maybe this will work.

I wondered why you didn't ask your own mother. Then I realized, I am her mother.

How could she say this to you? Who does she think she is, really? Was she beautiful, Cedar?

My mother many times voiced her regret that she was a mother. While she had wanted children, it did not turn into the TV commercial she thought it would be. But lacking the character to grow into her commitment, basically she came to blame the victims, the innocents, for what had been her mistake.

At least your Mom could be a little bit direct about, wishing you had never existed. That's all I can really say about it. How can you read it another way?

And it says that terrible word, right on her Baptism paper.

I would go to the Pope. Right now. You can say it is only a piece of paper. But it isn't really. This is a cruel, ugly word.

"Lest I grow cold about him or let his ugly behaviors devour me. Sometimes, it's the only gratitude I have for him. So...I'll take it."

And back to where I am with my son today, if my son seeks to plunge a knife precisely into my deepest pain...do I allow it? I seek not vengeance. I seek not control or power.

What I seek, I think, is a limit. The question is who calls who first? And what do we say? There is so much love here. On both of our parts.

Thank you Cedar.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Cedar, I do not know how to stand with my son, right now.

That is just fine Copa, for now. That is a good, good thing for us to know ~ that we have time, that we are not required to know things we don't know how to know, yet. But do you see yourself there, Copa? Do you see how you are not deserting him, how you are not thinking bad thoughts or condemning him? You are standing with him, Copa. In every way that could possibly matter, you are right there.

He must feel rejected by me.

Here is what I think I know about this. It is right for your son to feel your rejection when he abuses you. It is the same concept as putting a toddler in time out. Thinking time. Time to review where he went, what he said, what that cost you.

You are reteaching him or maybe, teaching him for the first time, Copa.

He needs this lesson.

I am stuck in italics. I will end this and continue your post.

***

Good Morning, Copa.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

I hate it when out of the blue, the whole post gets erased by itself. It just jumps up and erases itself. You would think I would learn to do this in smaller increments. So I will start again. Something just popped up to tell me that there are new posts. To finish this now much abbreviated response, I am willfully ignoring it.

She is the War of the Grandma's Baklava granddaughter

What is this? In any event I want the winning recipe.

And my mother came in to check on us or something and she looked so beautiful. And she made sure to give us the part of the blanket with the silk on it, so we would have that part against our faces, that so pretty silky part of the blanket.

So, she loved us, then.

I have no such memory of my Mother's loving us. All of her prettiness was directly away from us, to the outside. I have said before that I loved it when my mother dressed up. For the few minutes after she put on her perfume, she would be there for us...as the adoring audience in which her beauty was reflected. There was nothing more. At home she really was the evil stepmother.

Like you I had my Grandmother. She was enough. Or it seemed so.

I just wish I did not feel sort of like a whore or something at the same time.

See above post. Interesting that independently we came up with the same metaphor.

I have to prove to whichever of her friends it is that I am not what we both know, my mother and me, that true thing that we know.

When my Mother first was hospitalized with the serious illness, I had been staying with her in her house later joined by M. He came to save me...as my mother had started in even then to consume me alive.

So, one day, my Mom in the hospital, we came home to find the housekeepers, a husband and wife team. The thing is here is this: They felt legitimate. I did not. They were rejecting. As if to blame me.

We spoke to them in Spanish. Usually, that helps. They were allies of my sister. Bringing her up in the conversation. Imagine that. We later came to believe that they helped her husband to enter the house to steal stuff. Including every picture.

The attorney had advised me to secure the house. I did not want to lock my sister out. I wanted her to have full access. Why? Mixed. She is a daughter. And this is above the protection of stuff. As much or more? I wanted her to transgress on some level. I felt it would protect me. If she could enter at her will...and do what she would do...she could not accuse me of corrupting the house.

Which she did do, in my role as executor. She accused me of stealing. She accused me and my excellent attorney of malfeasance (she too is an attorney).

But she did not accuse me vis a vis the house. And that had been my plan. To let her steal and violate would protect me.

That was my way of thinking at the time. It confuses me my line of thinking, born of course from the hall of mirrors that has been my family life.

accuses me of having stolen the clothing in my portable ice chest.

Falsely accused of stealing your own clothes, by a severe and brutal female boss. No one to defend or protect you. In a Playboy Ice Chest. Wow. I wonder who that your accuser is, Cedar? Tongue and Cheek. More of the whore metaphor.

You know I am remembering something from my Dad. My Dad was dissolute, more and more as he aged. To see him I had to hang out with him drinking in bars as a young, young woman. These were dive bars, see?

As we were leaving this one dive bar, some guy offered me money for sex. My Dad laughed.

is (my mother) still dangerous to me. That she is still dangerous to me, how?

The answer I think is this: Are you safe to be with your Mother.

I do not think your Mother will ever cease to be a danger. Nor will your sister. M is with your husband in terms of dangerous sisters. M knows my sister will seek me out...when she runs out of money. And of that M is afraid. I have few defenses against anybody...let alone my sister.

just go ahead and create family all around her and love and love her where she is until she is there for real.

Forgive me, Cedar. There is a gruesomeness in this. As if in some concentration camp or killing fields or some place of horror, somebody decides to draw a happy face...absolutely ignoring the truth of the true thing that happened there.

Cedar, guess what? Here is the original post below that I had thought had been gobbled up. I will not read or edit it and send to you both. So here goes.

Even if I left them, even if D H and I were divorced, this baby he and I had made and given birth to, would be theirs, would be their baby and their person they loved no matter what.

Cedar, this is so beautiful. And it makes so much sense. Even though it is as if from another planet, not mine. In our family, existence and rejection, and splitting happened simultaneously, and instantly.

I will tell you something special about me but I cannot be too specific, because I was famous, see? About my birth, and survival. And resilience, even then.

War of the Grandma's Baklava granddaughter

What is this? Is this a thread? I want in on the war of the Grandma's baklava. And the winning recipe, of course.

And my mother came in to check on us or something and she looked so beautiful. And she made sure to give us the part of the blanket with the silk on it, so we would have that part against our faces, that so pretty silky part of the blanket. So, she loved us, then.

I never had a moment, one moment that I can remember my mother as loving in this way. She was beautiful, yes, but only for the outside world. Only when oriented away from, not towards us.

Every memory of my mother inside the house, I was afraid of her. Her moods, her temper. Her.

But, like you I had my grandmother. Who was that for us.

I just wish I did not feel sort of like a whore or something at the same time. Like, I have to prove to whichever of her friends it is that I am not what we both know, my mother and me, that true thing that we know.

See my above post, re "whore or something" please. And that is all I will say here.

When my mother was in the hospital for the first time, when she and I were still in her city and M and I were in her home, the housekeeper and her husband were in the house when we entered.

The thing is this: they felt legitimate and made us feel like the interlopers. I felt great shame, but the shame was not mine. I know this. I was always made to be the one that had done the BAD thing. M did not like them. He said they were corrupt and false. I felt sad for my M that she could not tell the difference between real and false care. M sees it differently, that my mother did not herself care if it was real or false. Because she was false. She was buying care. No matter to her, if authentic or not.

That she is still dangerous to me, how?

I think I responded above to this. Once again, the safety is in you. The danger in her. It will always be so. You need to decide when you have bulked up enough, not in toughness, but in strength to withstand her dangers.

She is trying very hard to love my mother into family, to just go ahead and create family all around her and love and love her where she is until she is there for real.

I cannot add to what I wrote above. There is something corrupt here. To will evil into good is not possible nor is it right.

 

[BusynMember]

A totally off-the-wall thought that has nothing to do and everything to do with everything in all of these threads. An "aha" moment???

I know for fact, I KNOW FOR A FACT, that if my mother had been a big part of my life when I raised my kids, we would not have the loving relationships we have today. I know it. Mother was bigger than life and took up too much time. She ingratiated me too much and would have done it in front of my kids. She would have tried to divide and conquer my kids. She refused to accept my boundaries.

I am so grateful that my higher power protected me from this woman while I raised my kids.

Do any of you think your mother, or the mother of your mother complicated your childrearing?

Ok. If this is irrelevant, then take it as just my thoughts and carry on.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I have not attempted to call him because I do not want by my choice to give the appearance of condoning what he said and did. But at the same time I want to call him to embrace what he is to me.

When they are little, and they need to go in time out? We don't like that, either. But we recognize the need for instruction. When you are ready, if you are ready ever ~ and you may not be and that is a better thing ~ you could call him any time at all.

Better to teach this lesson now Copa, while the reason for the lesson is still crystal clear.

I do not want what happened with my Mother and I to repeat itself, and I will not let it.

That happened to me too, Copa. I was so determined not to be my mother that I was too fragile a mother to confront the very hard realities that happened with and for my children. When I stood up, so did they. That is what we are after, here. Not to punish. Out children cannot respect themselves, cannot love themselves in that good, strong way we want for them and for us too, if they do not love and respect their mothers.

That is a piece of the thing I am working out now, as I exchange what I needed to believe for what I now believe. I have to find balance between those two poles. I have to see with clarity. That takes time, and I am giving myself that time, blessing myself with that time.

I am worth that and so much, much more Copa, and you are, too.

How do you embrace the child who is victimizing?

Headlight's Mom's phrase about gratitude helps me with that I think, Copa. We, you and me and everyone who does not have that centering core mother in our psyches, we need to parent ourselves through this too, Copa.

We matter, we matter so much, to ourselves and to the world, or we would not be here.

"Lest I grow cold about him or let his ugly behaviors devour me. Sometimes, it's the only gratitude I have for him. So...I'll take it."

Headlights Mom

While I was held responsible for the separation of so many years...the volition to do so was every bit as much hers.

I'm sorry, Copa. I think she may have done that on purpose as my mother does, too.

I know where parenting too far into leniency took my children. I know standing up for myself helped them to see both me and themselves differently. I don't know how to think about my mom, either.

So I have nothing for you there, Copa.

SWOT sees me as abandoning my son because he does not measure up to my own expectations and needs. Essentially scapegoating him, for the way I was mistreated by my father. There is truth to what she says, I know, but I cannot yet find the way that it is true.

If your child were not using drugs, if your child were a strong, clean, well-nourished and happy man and yet, you kicked sand in his face for not meeting your expectations regarding his personal or professional life, then it would be true that you were not seeing or valuing your son for his own self. That is not what I hear in your posts. I hear desperate fear for your child, and for your relationship with your child. I hear true regret for him at what is happening to him, to his life. It is always beneficial to read what each of us offers, Copa. It is not always beneficial to take it to heart. We are so tender and broken Copa, here on the site. We sometimes (me too) read between the lines in a way different than was intended. Sometimes, we are so distracted ourselves with what we are learning, with where we are compared to where we need to be, that we post in ways, in so much harsher ways, than we intended.

Your response was correct. That you had cared appropriately and responsibly for your child from the beginning. Here's the thing, Copa. Whatever any of our deficits are, we are given this one life to live in this one time we have until it is over. Maybe there is karmic intention, maybe there is rebirth, maybe there is something happening we just cannot imagine. That is a true thing. We need to be as responsible to our selves and our lives as it is possible to be, given the blessings or the deficits each of us has to work through our lives with. Whatever his blessings or his deficits, your son is not currently taking respectful responsibility to his own life, for his own life.

That is the only problem, here.

There is no other problem.

You have already tried every single thing you could think to try on your own or you would not have found value in this site. None of us has the answers, Copa. But each of us posts what she has learned, hoping it will help the others of us to learn. This painful place that was awakened, this place of self doubt, Copa? This is one of those places where the responsible thing is to explore it, which you have done, and then, to cherish, and to have mercy, for Copa.

This is all really hard, Copa.

You are doing well.

Day by day, Copa. You are creating a space for something different to happen. Waiting, hoping ~ that is the hardest part. Was that thing we did, that decision we made, was that a wrong thing in any of a thousand ways?

We don't know.

If you can sit with the feelings, Copa, I think that will help in this time. That is what I tell myself. I do my best thing that I know, and that is all I know to say about how to know how to do these very hard things.

I hate her.

Well, that's why I picked this incident as my set point, Copa.

It provides a measure of clarity.

I am remembering every incident in the exact way I put it away, and in the thousands of ways whatever it was that really happened has taken on other tones as the years and years have passed. This rings true for me. It brought me to that shaken place where I know the feel of the original trauma, where I feel the repressed energy let go.

And that was pretty scary, when that happened, this time. So, I am onto a core of a true thing here. I am onto a core of what my version of the true thing that happened is.

Maybe it would look really different through my mother's eyes. But I am choosing to see, now and this and everything I can, through my own eyes, now.

This is my set point; this is where I can know how to see what is coming, next. But I got to a place where I wondered whether my first choices were the correct ones after all. It feels correct that loving a person enough would be the right thing, the correct thing, for everyone. But I was hiding the trauma of those things that were true for me, in my memory ~ I was forgiving or understanding or believing my way into what I wanted for my mother and between my mother and myself. I have learned, with D H to witness for me, that I was not seeing events he remembers too, clearly.

I was not seeing them, at all.

I was seeing "That's just how mom is." Or, "That's just how Sister is."

And that worked. But especially after my father's death, that is not working, to see like that. So, I have to figure out another way to see.

Thank you for witnessing for me.

I don't know how I feel. Confused; little lost. Little lonely. I go back to gratitude in those times. I did that, today. Here is what I found.

Be tolerant of those who are lost on their path. Ignorance, Conceit, Anger, Jealousy and Greed stem from a lost soul. Pray that they will find guidance.

That is a Native American saying, taken from Elder Wisdom.

When you live with an eye towards gratitude, you will give yourself even more reasons to track your other habits. Be grateful for the time you have found to move, sleep, meditate, and work on your priorities today.

That is Arianna Huffington.

It is almost as if there is flavor of your mother pimping you. She wants to own and take profit from your beauty. To take her cut.

Yes, I think this is true. I wondered, as I read through your comment again, how I saw my own daughter, my own granddaughters ~ my own son, even ~ how do I see their beauty. I know that in D H family, there is not so much beauty. (Other than my D H. He looks like a pirate, savagely beautiful like that. To me, he does. There is beauty of spirit and heart and presence. There is access to the full range of emotion. There is self-possession. There is curiosity about, and a right to have an opinion about, everything everyone in the family does, but somehow, they don't do that in a harsh way.

So, the issue of beauty.

They think I am beautiful, even now. I think they think that. But it doesn't matter, it isn't real, it means nothing too much compared to whether dinner is ready or the food was good or the sun was out or the garden is in.

And those things are the things that matter, Copa.

Those things are real.

Can you imagine Copa that there was a time in our history when no one had ever seen their own reflection clearly? A time when a mirror was only a tiny thing, and when there were no photographs? A time then, when we were less visual, were not pinned to the urgency in visual that we are today.

That just blows me away.

Here is something pretty.

The magical thing about Ephram Jennings was that if you looked real hard, you could see a circle of violet rimming the brown of his irises. Soft like the petals of spreading periwinkle.

...

Folks never did see his Chinese lamp hat, or his purple-ringed irises, or the way that they matched just perfectly the berry tint of his lower lip. They didn't see the ten crescent moons held captive in his fingernails, the way he moved, like a man gliding under water, smooth and liquid as Marion Lake. They didn't notice how the blue in his socks coordinated with the buttons on his Sunday shirt or smell the well-brushed sheen of Brylcreem in his thick hair.

They didn't notice the gracious pause he'd take after someone would finish a sentence, the way he'd give folks the chance to take air back into their lungs, before he'd fill the space up with his own breath and words.

They didn't see the way his pupils got wide when his heart filled up with pride or love or hope.

But Ruby did.

When her life was only a building long scream that faded into night. Even then Ruby noticed Ephram.

Ruby
Cynthia Bond

So we both can see there Copa, what matters. And it has so little to do with the thing we term our appearances. Given your description Copa, it seems you have been very harsh with yourself.

I will say what I see.

Your beauty, whatever beauty I had, should have been delight and pleasure and joy and glee. It was not. It was shame. It was hiding. Even fear.

Oh, wait. I want to comment on this first: Yes. True. That has been happening for me, lately. It's the loveliest feeling imaginable, Copa. This is how everyone else gets to see themselves. This is what we are working toward too, Copa. To catch a glimpse of ourselves and be so happy with ourselves, just as we are, and to never see ugliness there again without recognizing...our mothers. Swooping in from who knows or cares where to destroy us again in the core of our selves.

I never knew how I looked, Copa. It is still a bit of a kaliedescope for me. But that is alright. I have made a space for change to occur.

Yay!

I think this is a place we were injured then, Copa. We need to be kinder to ourselves around our appearances. Not kind: there is pressure there. Only kinder. That is how I began that part of my healing without even knowing appearance would come into it at all. I was so cruel to myself about my appearance. About my teeth or my breath or my scent or my voice or my ears. There are lots of places to be regretful, if that is what we have been taught.

Kinder, Copa.

Mercy; have mercy. You and I? We are human beings celebrating what it is to be human exactly in the day we are in. All those lines and sagginess and all those beautiful things that slid South or just hang there?

That's me! That's how it looks like in Cedar territory, now.

Huh.

Who could have thought that all those old ladies I used to see still felt so alive as I do, now that I look old, too.

Who could have thought life would be so vivid, so deeply colored and flavorful and rare, to those old ladies ~ old like me, now.

There is a difference between: old woman, and old lady.

You are a woman lady, Copa. And so am I.

Had we been able subjectively to own our beauty it would not be so fearsome to lose it.

My own beauty is much faded. I panic. I look in the mirror and feel horror. Loss of control. Sometimes, I fear that I cannot live at all if I am no longer lovely. I was never a real beauty. But good enough. Into my 50 I was stopped in the street and talked about in terms of my appearance. Not now. I am fat. Gray. I mean iron, dull, gray. Mousy brown gray. My dark chestnut with red and gold hair was that of the angels. I never felt its loveliness. That I lament.

I am divided Sometimes I feel a worthy goal is to let this whole appearance thing go...I mean I already have...but still want to get it back. I feel that is what healthy women do. They age. And it is okay. The extra pounds. The half size dresses. Those shoes. To me this shows strength, and acceptance.

I am my mother's daughter. I cannot let that part of me go. Without a fight So I am trying to eat 600 kcals a day, hoping that maybe this will work.

I think losing her beauty is a woman's place where she finds her true value. Beautiful is where we value what is seen through someone else's eyes. And that matters very much, when we are beautiful young women ~ man, that was fun! We didn't know then that it would not always be that way, for us. I remember when I began to feel invisible. It was in like, WalMart or somewhere, and it happened over time. I realized no one was looking. Not in that way they used to look and I pretended not to know.

What to hay?!?

And then I noticed that no matter where I was...no one was still looking.

Not in that way.

Well, how do you like that.

And then, I realized there was a real freedom, a real sense of my self and of unlimited time or something like that.

No one was looking.

Not like that.

Not anymore, ever.

Huh.

But here is the thing: I still cut quite a swath through the eighty year old crowd.

:O)

I told that one to D H one day?

I said something about the eighty years olds, and how they were falling at my feet? and D H said, cool as a cucumber: "Cardiac."

As in cardiac arrest.

Ha!

That is the cool thing about D H. He doesn't care what I look like because he thinks he is prettier than me. Know why he thinks that?

Because his mother loved him.

***

So Copa, now we know who we are agreeing with when we think that how someone else sees us matters. Good or bad, Copa. Beautiful or dreadfully ugly. If our mothers loved us? How we look is just a thing. Like a tree, or a nice pork chop.

Loss of control.

Loss of control of who, Copa?

D H: Upon being asked the question about women and how we feel so unattractive as we age. "We never say that about wine. We say those who do not appreciate a good wine are unsophisticated fools. And D H said: Those who don't know any better believe that same thing about men. Lose your hair? Lose your musculature and your teeth and your mojo?

Screw them if they don't know how to see me.

I know who I am."

And that is a well-mothered man.

But D H has himself a field day out in the world, Copa. And he comes home, and we tell one another about all the beautiful young things, male or female, we have seen that day.

A vicarious celebration to be sure, but a celebration of life, nonetheless.

***

Iron gray hair. D H had black hair. He has beautiful white hair, now. Iron gray...I think you are being unkind to Copa. Surely, her hair is the strong, thick hair I see in pictures of Latina women. My granddaughters other grandmothers are Native Americans. As they have aged, the eyes have come to dominate their faces. So brown they are almost black, and filled with snapping and kindness and mean streaks and great good humor.

I think both are really fat, now that you mention it, Copa.

Like that matters.

It is just who they are. One of the grandmothers? Dances in her tribal celebrations in a dress specially constructed to concentrate and focus the secret power in the heart of a woman. I just learned that, this morning. I knew she danced, of course. I did not know those jingling things on every Native female's dancing costume were meant to concentrate and to focus her power for the Tribe.

You learn something new every day.

I would like a jingle dress.

But here is a secret: Only a female relative can make your jingle dress.

It has something to do with the power of women, and with the power of the female line.

***

Maya Angelou was a beautiful woman in her youth. She was not a beautiful woman (except for her eyes and her soul and her heart) as she became famous. I will find a quote from Maya regarding appearance and aging and how to see ourselves there, Copa.

Maya will have that information for us.

That is why I picked Maya Angelou.

Because she is self created, and she can teach us that good thing, too.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

Copa, this happens often. However, you have good reason to detch from your son. The actual words that you'd be done with him concern me. No child deserves to be disowned. It is a pain you never forget. Low contact. Protecting yourself, yes. But to forget he is your child?Please don't go that far. He already has abandonment issues due to being adopted. All adopted kids have those feelings in the backs of their minds.

It's a personal opinion and could be wrong, but I don't believe in disowning people unless they make it clear that's what they want. It is too hurtful. And i do think if our dead parents are driving our behavior in any way, its time to get professional help. It was time for ME to get a new psychologist who can teach me how to let go and treat PTSD from my past. It was time to stop torturing me. I have currently learned how to relax the minute the stress starts up and E. and Thing 1 and 2 talk in my head. IT HAS REALLY CALMED ME DOWN!

I never thought I'd learn the skill, but I AM LEARNING. Am I perfect with it? No. Will I ever be? Probably not. But I am so much calmer and happier and am letting them all go; the memories are not real. Memories are the past. They no longer exist. They are no longer our reality (I read this in a Trish Braham book, I think).

Yes, there are creepy therapists. But they work for us so we can fire them and find a good one and a good one is gold. You do not mention seeing one ever and my layman's and none-of-my-business recommendation is that you are so nonfunctional with staying in bed for days and maybe not being able to keep your relationship together and so guilty for no reason at all over your mother that good (emphasis good) therapy would help you. Without therapy I'd be in bed roo, every day, maybe I'd have committed suicide with my depression issues. Good therapists, in my opinion, know cognitive behavioral therapy and dialectal behavioral therapy and look for solutions, not just jabbering about the past. That never helped me, at least. Not by itself. Of course, the topic came up...

Copa, it's time you took good care of yourself and that includes learning coping skills to get rid of your mother and the unreasonable guilt you feel over her death. As you grown and get perspective, you will think differently about your son too. And M. And yourself, most importantly of all.

Maybe you are getting help. If you are not, you are not tending to yourself or nurturing yourself. You are allowing your past and present to destroy your chances of happiness. Working too much can be a ploy that many of us use to push the bad thoughts in back of our head, but if we don't deal with them, they never really go away. What did you ever do to deserve the curse of your tormented past and present?

I hope you start putting yourself first, but not in a selfish way...in a way that heals you by getting the best help for yourself that you can. This can also include a nutritionist, Yogi classes, kickboxing, meditation...you need help walking over that hill, which sometimes seems like a mountain. And nobody is strong enough to do it alone.

If your father abused you and you connect your father with your son, it is time for help. That is called a trigger. We all have them. Because the fact is, your son may have problems and be very rude at times, but he is not your father. He is a trigger. His behavior is a trigger. I have many triggers too.

Blessings on your poor hurting heart and hoping you start to do the things you need to do to heal. Life is short. Why waste it in agony?

 

[InsaneCdn]

Do any of you think your mother, or the mother of your mother complicated your childrearing?

Seriously? Yes and yes.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I would go to the Pope. Right now. You can say it is only a piece of paper. But it isn't really. This is a cruel, ugly word.

You can do that?

I will.

This Pope is so kindly. That priest was Irish. I should have looked for an Italian one.

What I seek, I think, is a limit. The question is who calls who first? And what do we say? There is so much love here. On both of our parts.

Well, I say you can call any time. Any time you feel you are ready and I never don't call my kids just because they hate me today. (They hate me pretty frequently.) One time, I was talking to daughter before she was totally healed and in control of how she thought, or of what she would say. And she was saying really awful things about how we had deserted her, about how we left her there where she was suffering and alone and in danger. And then? She says: "Roar! I have to go now, mom. I don't want to say something I'm going to regret."

Well.

Huh.

With as bad as what she did say was? I can't even imagine. But I acknowledge her right to those feelings, Copa. I liked it just fine that she believed she had gotten off the line before she really blasted me.

Our son was actually actively abusing me. This is where SWOT's postings about adult children abusing their parents were so crucially helpful to me. I couldn't see it. You can see it, Copa. You know that what your son said, and the way he said it, was designed to hurt you, to rip open traumatic things you've spent your life protecting both him and yourself from.

He had no right, Copa.

If you call him, be really certain in your own heart that he had absolutely no right to behave toward you, or to anyone else really, in an abusive manner.

Lest you lose respect for him.

He was raised better.

You can call him this minute Copa, or next year. You have time. That is your son, Copa. He loves you. You are his mother. Everything you do in relationship with him teaches him a thing only a mother could teach. That is your only responsibility.

Be his mother.

Tough or tender by turn, as the case requires.

Abusive behaviors, even if our sons are strung out on some drug designed specifically to make sons say crappy things to their mothers?

No.

Nothing more than that is true or matters, here.

You are his mother.

Call him when you are ready.

He doesn't have to need you. You don't have to need him. It's just that there is no reason not to call. It isn't a contest. You get to be really pissed at him for disrespecting you.

Not for hurting you.

He did not do that.

Your mother did, or your father.

But your son did disrespect you.

And that is the issue.

You can tell us about the hurt of it? But I would not breathe a word about that, to my son.

Respect for a mother is what will help him to stand up. There is no question, there.

The hurt of what he said?

Can be dealt with here, on the site if you feel okay with that. Or in therapy, or in any safe place.

I mean, I would acknowledge that I was hurt by the attack? But there is a place, a line I think, between old trauma recalled and come live, and a person who doesn't understand the depth of the wound he made.

I think that is true. SWOT will be better with this aspect of things. She will be posting in soon I think.

What is this? In any event I want the winning recipe.

That delightful experience we all got to share is on a thread in Watercooler. The War of the Grandma's Baklava is the title, I think. Lil, who posts to us in P.E. (Lil and Jabber ~ that Lil) posted a baklava recipe from AllRecipes.com for me. I made it and it was so good!

:O)

And I won the war of the Grandma's Baklava. But then, she broke up with the Greek person whose grandma's baklava there was to be an Ugly Sweater party to compare to mine, so that party never happened.

The baklava was better, so this granddaughter tells me. But we do not have a general consensus. I will be making that baklava every Christmas from now on. And I will send it, along with a synopsis of how it was found and how it was that we made it, to family members each year.

A new family tradition.

That granddaughter? Has just left a cabin in the deep Northwoods where she spent time with, and learned all about hand-crafted and created tea from, a bona fide hippy. I ordered a tea called Golden Orchid, and will serve it when I host my book club in June.

Now, that granddaughter (I have two) is in another place where she has been hired to do the plantings for a person's yard. She is a...something to do with growing marijuana in water. And she loves all kinds of plants, and that is how she was hired to do the planting for this person's garden.

It is way fun to have grands, Copa. But here is a thing: This grand called us last summer, confessed to alcoholism, and wanted to come home.

We said no.

And oh, if you could see her today, Copa.

She has fallen and stood up again a million times in this year.

And she is going to be fine. If we had taken her in, these wonderful stories would never have happened.

Like you I had my Grandmother. She was enough.

She was, Copa. Or you would not be who you are, today. I know that is very true, for me.

How else could we know, as we go back to correct the way we were taught to see, that hating us was wrong?

Those are our grandmothers there in the core of us, Copa. And they always did love us, and know we could do this.

And know we were meant to.

The thing is this: they felt legitimate and made us feel like the interlopers. I felt great shame, but the shame was not mine. I know this. I was always made to be the one that had done the BAD thing. M did not like them. He said they were corrupt and false

I so get this. That is why I could never have a housekeeper.

I never thought to identify those feelings as part of having been toxically shamed.

Darn that mother of mine.

I would like to have a maid.

:O)

Okay. What I would really like to have is a handsome young butler.

We won't tell D H that part, though.

You need to decide when you have bulked up enough, not in toughness, but in strength to withstand her dangers.

That is what D H says, Copa.

But he says I will never be stronger enough, because I am vulnerable to my mother in ways I cannot see.

There is something corrupt here. To will evil into good is not possible nor is it right.

This is true. But the other true thing is that...well, I don't know. I have not read of sociopaths being changed, or wanting to change. But I have read about people in prison who come out of it reformed.

So, that is why I am posting and posting.

I so appreciate your witnessing for me, Copa.

Thank you.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Do any of you think your mother, or the mother of your mother complicated your childrearing?

Yes.

(Hi, SWOT! :O)

My mother...there was just something not right. She was like, famous, to my kids. You are right in the sense that she drew the air, SWOT. When I was pregnant, she was all suspicious of whether the baby was legitimate. Like, had she been conceived before D H and I were married or did we have to get married ~ that kind of feeling. She said to me once "Just how pregnant are you?"

But I don't see how that could matter. D H and I lived with each other for a year before we were married, and I had been trying to be pregnant for some of that time. It was in a time when it didn't matter whether you were married or not. We were married, and I am glad now that we are, but I had no real concept of marriage as something sacred, or as something that mattered, or of husbands as the lovely things they are to have.

I learned all that from D H, as he would be the first to tell you.

Anyway, then she was all about how babies are nothing special and not to expect her to babysit ever and things in that line. After the baby was born, my mother said she fell in love with her. It was overwhelming in a way. And it left our second child, a son, out of the picture in every smallest way she could manage.

She was unimportant to us in those days, my mother.

She bought the baby a very nice stroller.

But D H mom taught me how to hold her and how to be a mom, and how to face it when I was pregnant again so soon.

***
I had not wanted my mother anywhere near my kids. D H could not wrap his mind around that concept. He did not really know about my mom until after my father died, and my mom had no one to keep her in check.

You are very right about this, SWOT.

When daughter went into that first treatment, my mother cold shouldered her, predicted a horrible end for her, pretty much accused D H of having molested her sexually ~ man, you name it.

But we had D H mom.

And so did our daughter, and our son, and they had all the uncles and aunts and cousins and they still do.

But you are very right about the horrible evil a bad mother can wreak on her grandchildren and on her daughter, suddenly so vulnerably pregnant, or so vulnerably, kindly maternal.

I mean, I knew I had to protect my kids from their grandmother?

But they seemed to enjoy her, on those rare occasions I would let her have them over night. One time, she took daughter home to her family, and I allowed that. And at the airport when I picked them up, there was a feeling like, "There's your stupid mother, waving and etc and now our time is over."

Like that.

But when my mother and I picked my mother's brother up at the airport? It was like...it was a little like that whore feeling, again.

So, I think this was a valuable thread for me, SWOT.

Thank you. It seems the threads go where they need to. I wish you would post more of your observations regarding your mom and how that all worked.

We all are learning from one another.

When you guys can get a word in edgewise, I mean.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

The actual words that you'd be done with him concern me. No child deserves to be disowned

SWOT I never wrote I would disown my son, never once in my life thought it, wanted it, nor will I ever want it. Nor did I ever express anything like that.

One day I will die. Sooner or later. When that happens my son will need to deal with it. But dying will not be volitional on my part, at least I hope not.

The word disown would never ever come into my head. Nor would I ever say them to my son or think them in my own.

Those words SWOT came from your head, your experience, not mine. Next time, ask me if something troubles you. And I will explain and clarify. Let me repeat, if I was not clear enough to be understood, ask me SWOT, please.

If you phrase your concern as a question, there is the possibility of learning. To judge somebody whether it was meant as that or not, based upon your own triggers, your own feelings, your own trauma, acts to limit your growth too.

We then are reacting from fear rather than opening to possibility and growth, I believe. We then are re-enacting the same trauma from which we flee.

Sometimes the steps we take as parents are not those that we ever believe we will have to take. There is vulnerability there, SWOT. And doubt. With me, please, tread more carefully. Or, if you choose not to SWOT, I would prefer that you do not post to my threads or comment on my postings.

 

[BusynMember]

Yes, I think it was "triggered" myself and seeing something that wasn't there. Deep apologies.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I have said before that I loved it when my mother dressed up. For the few minutes after she put on her perfume, she would be there for us...as the adoring audience in which her beauty was reflected.

This has to be a classic or numismatic (which I will need to look up, but I think that is what I mean) imagery. We are talking either about gold coins, or about anima/animus stuff. And either imagery would be correct, so we will just let that stand, then. The beautiful mother/female powerful/breathtakingly beautiful/safe and protected. And then, the loneliness, after the mother is gone?

That lonely little feeling of not enough? The surprise and gratitude that the mother is beautiful and not hurting us and seems happy with us after all? The realization that she leaves then, and that when she comes back to us, she is disappointed with us again. And then, that sort of fraudulent feeling ~ as though we should have known better than to believe the mother could have been pleased with us.

?

***

So, I intended to go back to read our whole thread. It turns out I will not need to do that, after all. I am letting things gel regarding my mom and my sister. Recalling that hurtful stuff left me feeling like I was in a low energy version of FOG. I could know that is why I felt so strange and vulnerable, but I still feel that way, this morning. Just little things, and I find myself feeling inadequate to them. Like I needed to call a plumber this morning. And I did it of course, but it was like I was embarrassed and felt stupid that I needed a plumber.

So, those are the kinds of things that happen to us when we uncover old traumas. I must have felt bare-naked vulnerable when the traumatic things happened in real time.

And I feel badly for myself that this was so. I don't even see the courage in doing the right thing ~ which is probably good, because I do want the actual feelings attending these events to be cleared. And that feeling badly for me, for that young mother I was, instead of applauding my courage in having done what I could, or in identifying with the abuser and seeing myself as worth less, or as essentially wrong or fraudulent in a way I could not look at; well, that must mean I am healing the events surrounding that particular set of traumas.

So, that is good, then.

Just a little fallen apart today is all.

On the dream I related? The one about the ice chest and the change of clothes? That is this time. The forbidding supervisor figure is probably a compilation of my mother and my sister. The clothing I will change in to, the clothing that is legitimately mine and that the supervisor figure intends to punish me for having (and which she has confiscated for that purpose) well, that is self concept. I will find legitimacy in, and lay claim to, another facet of self through this work. The scary feeling, the feeling that the supervisor intends to fire me, that I will be fired...normally, a person would do everything in their power to keep their jobs, to prove they did not do the thing for which the supervisor intends to fire them.

I did not do that.

I said what I said and accepted that I would be fired.

But even if she fires me, that does not change the fact that those are my clothes.

Whatever she does, whatever my coworkers (other aspects of self?) do or do not do to protect me in their own fear of the supervisor figure, those are still my clothes, in that ice chest.

So, that's good, then.

Later, we will go back and save them, too. Both the coworkers and the clothes.

Because the supervisor figure will no longer exist. She will be an incorporated part of me.
Remember when I posted that scary thing about our enemies being not defeated, but devoured? That must be what I meant.

***

This is working for me, what we are doing, here.

Thank you.

Since I was fifty years old I put her to rest and have barely thought of her. Why is she prominant now? What triggered it? I was never this angry about how she had disowned me before this. Sad, yes. Angry, no. Now I'm reading a lot about others who have gone through this and it makes me angry and sad for all of them. I never really thought about it. It is always an act of meanness and the adult child is always a little puzzled as to what he/she did. Most parents excuse the stuff our parents don't excuse. I' n not even quite sure what she needed to excuse.

You are stronger now. It seems to me that part of you is demanding reclamation of the parts of you that were devoted to protecting you from the hurt of this thing that happened that you could neither face nor figure out. Really, the mother needs a good, swift, posthumous kick in the pants.

And you are about to give it to her.

If you have an extra minute, SWOT...could you run over and give my mom and my sister a kick in the pants, too?

As long as you are in an a** kicking mood, I mean.

:O)

***THIS IS THE PART WHERE I HEAL***

Also, I've just realized that I am not throwing either my mother or my sister out of my life. What I am doing is changing how I see them. This will mean I speak very differently to them in future. That is a changing insight that means everything. I was horrifying myself with who it made me if I were the kind of person who justified condemning and turning away from and hating someone enough, whether I were willing to acknowledge that anger and hatred consciously or not, to...to sort of make them dead to me.

That was the thing I could not find my way out of.

That is why I posted about the validity, about the probable rightness, of my sister's unspoken contention that she is committed to loving my mother back to health. My sister was correct in telling me she had learned that concept from me.

But especially since my father died, my mother's take on things, and probably my sister's take on things too, have dominated the family dynamic.

Copa is correct in her assessment of my family's dysfunction being something more pointed and wicked and determinedly wrong than can be loved away or accepted away or excused and forgiven away.

So.

I may not need to reread the thread, after all.

I may be done, here.

Thank you both, SWOT and Copa.

I will be checking the thread many times daily so I can be there for you as you have been, for me.

Your presence, your bearing witness for me, made this possible.

So, that's good, then.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

But especially since my father died, my mother's take on things, and probably my sister's take on things too, have dominated the family dynamic.

And that is why, each time I touched on those true things that I know about exclusion, and about golden child grands (thank you for that imagery, SWOT), my sister literally exploded into raging and tears. Because she is doing those very things, and she is doing them on purpose and she knows it. Only, I am not supposed to know that about her. I am supposed to believe in her, so she can do what she wants to all of us, unimpeded. And that is why she pulled out those sure fire phrases about my having taught her and protected her in the past.

And about loving our mother into having the capacity to love us; to be our mother. That would be pure Cedar, for sure. I still think that must be true. Look what we are accomplishing here, standing for and witnessing for one another.

And I will admit that I can still feel that pain in her voice. And that makes me feel shaky, like a bad person who is deserting her or something. Like a person who was never enough, or who was fraudulent and wanted to hurt or destroy her all along, and that is why all these bad things happened to all of us. It's like a deepening spiral of self condemnation where one untrue possible thing cascades into a thousand untrue things that look pretty true, all at once because I can't even see straight.

FOG, right?

So we capitulate. We choose loving them enough to love them into how we believe it could be, for all of us.

But they exclude, my mother and my sister.

And that is not what the picture is supposed to look or feel like. I mean, it's one thing for everyone to be sort of floundering around trying to put things back together. That is what we are doing now, in the family D H and I created. And sometimes, that looks pretty good. And sometimes, it looks really crummy and like we are not going to make it. But I read somewhere: Real boats rock. So, I think that means we are being honest to the degree we are capable of, today.

**

So, that is how I could know that whatever it was they (mom and my sister) were doing, it was not creating that family I still, some stupid somehow, believe could happen for all of us.

But it will never happen this way they are doing it, no matter how many pictures there are, and no matter the words they use to describe what they are doing, what they are sacrificing to do, for all of our sakes. My sister also exploded over how much it has cost her, and how I was not there when I should have been, and how I have never been there and etc. And she said her marriage was falling apart and whatever else she said. And I felt pretty guilty there too, because she used to be able to call me, and to tell me how she saw what was happening between she and her husband, and I would respond to the pain in her.)

And would invariably validate her point of view and tell her she was good and how to maybe see things differently and etc.

And D H would always get so mad at me about that, because my sister would call, or not call for months, any time day or night and I would feel as driven to be there for her as I would be, for one of my own kids or grands.

And I never could see why he would be upset with me because, and this is just what I would say to him: That is my sister.

And I remember your having posted that your sister did this to you too, SWOT.

But I suspect it, now. All those things she said in that phone call; all those words she chose. Because here is the thing: Though I was on pins and needles about when she would call, or whether she would call or just show up at the door or whether none of this would happen...she did know. And of course she had prepared herself in advance for how she would respond, whatever my response to her was.

And I just got that right this minute.

It was a manipulation. All of it. The whole thing. What she really wanted from me had nothing to do with family unity. She does not want my mother to have that man there again this summer. She said something about that in her phone call, too. I think she may have started the call with that and that is when I said whatever I said that caused the first explosion.

I see that.

D H helped me with that part.

And about those pictures I still have of my mother and my sister, separately or together (thank you Copa) for this important piece. I could see those things D H has been trying to tell me were true things, and that the way I was seeing my FOO was not a true thing, through your postings about the pictures you keep of your mother.

Those pictures weaken us because they seem to be proof that we are thinking ~ well, not to sound stupid here, but sometimes the voice changes to a younger time when we are working through something hurtful.

When we are touching, again and again, a place where we were hurt that this thing, these pictures, represent in the real world of here and now.

And what those pictures represented for me, and maybe they do for you too Copa, is that as my mom and my sister seemed to be doing this thing, seemed to be making loving family, the wrong person, the person who was not and never had been and never could be enough, was me.

So maybe my mother (and my sister?) had been right about me, all along.

So maybe, every time we see those pictures, we condemn ourselves, one more time and forever, over and over again, for not being the person who was enough to have brought our mothers to love us the way they did when they were beautiful when we were little. And we did not know then that they were happy because they were going out somewhere, and that it never had a thing to do with us, at all.

We never did get to be enough, even in those moments we have clung to, all our adult lives.

I think that could be true. I mean, I'm fuzzy on the edges of it, but I think that could be true.

SWOT posted to us that she had destroyed pictures of herself as a child.

Oh, SWOT. I wish you could have those pictures of that beautiful little girl you must surely have been back. You could love her so much, now.

***

Because the true thing here is that there were so many, many times when our mothers were neither beautiful, nor happy, to see us.

Here is another therapy piece coming up pretty often lately. Might as well have at it, now.

***

So, I was like, eight. I was sick. I stayed home from school. I was sick enough that I stayed in bed all day. There was a repainted white dresser beside the bed and for some reason, I ran my thumb along the edges of a place where the paint was peeling, and peeled off more paint.

More strips of white paint.

And when my mother got home that day and came to check on me (we had a babysitter during the day) and she saw what I had done, she made me eat the strips of paint on the floor beside the dresser. And there was hair and dust in them.

And I was sick.

And she was so mad.

And it makes me feel weak, to remember her, so big and so mad and coming right for me, just lying there in my bed like a sick person instead of being ~ instead of forgetting to be afraid of my mother.

Instead of forgetting that.

This attaches to a time when she burst into my bedroom (I was either six or maybe,seven) and ~ boom ~ strangled me. I can still feel the bed behind the backs of my knees and crashing down. And I feel the giving up, the not being able to draw breath and not even caring any more, about that. A therapist asked me once why I thought she stopped. I said probably because she knew she would be caught.

Someone would know.

I was six, then. Or I was seven. So that is a pretty little person to be, to have someone so big strangle you like that.

And yet, all along, I knew, the whole time, that other people thought I was this really pretty little girl.

So, you see the core of that conflict we are dealing with now, as we age and we are no longer seeing that finer reality reflected ~ we are no longer being validated in the same way, in the outer world as we were when we were little girls, or when we were beautiful young women ~ which every young woman is. And if we are attracting attention in that way, or if someone insists that we are, like my mother did that day at WalMart, then all we have left, since we know we are no longer legitimately, perfectly beautiful in the way we were when we were young women, then all we have left is what our mothers taught us was true.

Strangled.

White paint strips.

Crying brother. Helplessness; cowardice. So utterly an admission of powerlessness.

I am afraid, so afraid, too.

Sorry for the ugly in these stories. Thank you so much for providing a safe place for me to be that ugly little girl, that ugly/not ugly/only how I look matters young girl or young woman.

Ours is an ugly story.

But at least now, we know what it is.

And we know who wrote it.

I see you.

I see you, mom. I see you back.

Not to be too big a weirdo here, but I am bringing in Maya and the lady from Matrix and Lisa to see you, too.

***

Maybe that is why I have picked the eyes of two black ladies to see these things through. Because they have been through similar things themselves, and have come through it.
And because of their race, they have lived that kind of global condemnation that has nothing to do with what you did, and everything to do with what was already believed about you before you were ever even born. And you just sort of stumble over it one day, that they hate you for something you cannot help being.

And who you are, who you might be or might have been, has nothing to do with it because according to your own freaking mother, you are only that thing that they see, and nothing more.

But Maya is more.

So, there you go, then.

And Lisa was chosen as witness because of the English concept of fair play. It would not matter to her that I was as I was. It would be the principle of the thing. That is how the Lisa witness would know, without question, that what my mother did to me, and to all of us, was wrong.

So, those were pretty good witnesses to choose.

Lisa's take on everything I show her, or ask her opinion on: "Unacceptable."

Just that.

Not even any emotion. Just utter surprise at the wrongness of these things.

"Unacceptable."

And that has been working really well for me, in conjunction with the Maya witness and the black lady from Matrix witness.

On we go.

***

Thank heaven this site is anonymous.

I swear, there are people who know me? Who think I am perfectly, rationally, totally sane. And I am, because I can go there or not.

That is the difference.

Locus of control.

Maybe that is why all these traumatic things have gone unexamined until we had what we needed to undo them.

Because we may not have come out of it sane, otherwise.

So, we did good, then.

Here we all are, upright and accounted for.

On we go.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

She is thinking about me, when she says I don't matter to her anymore.

Well, I could be very wrong about your sister. I don't even know her. But what I think might be true is that our sisters are nothing ~ remotely nothing at all ~ like we convinced ourselves they were. In fact SWOT and Copa, they might be so like our mothers as to be indistinguishable from them. So, it is a possibly true thing that we have been living our lives, and have seen ourselves reflected by, people who were...I don't know. Committed to our destruction or something. Or committed to dominating us, or to gaslighting us. Whatever it was they were committed to, we never had a real sister.

Ever.

Not even when we were little girls, or when we were adolescents ourselves, or when we were young mothers and we needed a sister and a mother and we never had one, at all.

We never did.

***

And this cannot possibly be something we could love them out of or accept them deeply enough out of or whatever it is we have been trying to do with them or, just like we tell one another here on the site about our kids? Our sisters (and our mothers too, probably) would be television preachers today, so thoroughly saved we would look like pikers, next to them.

***

We are older than they are. Copa, this is true for you too, I believe? Whether our personalities came to us through the hurt of it, or whether we were born more empathic than the average bear, we tend to feel it in our hearts too, when someone else is in pain or even, in great joy. This capacity to feel it in our own hearts when someone is happy, too ~ and not just when someone is sad or has been traumatized ~ this tells us that who we are is a real thing, and is not a response to traumatic happenings when we were too little to have perspective on just who the villain was, around here.

So, the answer to why our sisters do what they do is because they do what they do. That is the only answer. We need to be wise, and we need to be wary. And we can do that without thinking twice about it where our sisters or other sibs are concerned because we have already learned to do that where our children are concerned.

And we love them more, so that was way harder.

It might be hard to see our mothers that way, though.

***

That started the ball reading to try to figure out how dysfunctional, sick families tick...

Yup. And though it was hurt that got you started, you helped every one of us here with those articles. You helped me, for sure.

Just like you did with the articles on verbally abusive adult children.

Then what? Another will. That is traumatic. Thing 1 in charge because Dad, like E., believes he will be fair. But I don't trust him. I read about these horrible will wars. Now I want to read my mother's will. I can get a copy of it.

Why do I want to read it ten years later? It is bound to only hurt me.

That could be the push behind everything now, SWOT. Just like for me, the push was that we would be returning to the area where my mother lives when she is not with my sister, now that my father is gone. And my sister did say, on her last message to me which she knows now that I listen to because she left the one where she sounded so sad and strung out and it was something to do with my mother and it turned out to be a beach visit and not that my mother was dying, or had died, or was intending to die, after all.

Where was I going with this.

And I picked up and responded.

So, my sister left me that last message that she would be here this summer and would see me then. Or whatever she said. Last summer? I told D H I was not coming here to this house at all. I told him I could not face what was, or was not, going on with my mother and I would be staying right where I was, down in that other house in another state altogether, for the summer.

Which I didn't get to do, after all.

Same thing this year. Just that scared, sick feeling but you don't know why you should be scared because after all you are an adult now. But I have been scared, SWOT. It was just hanging over my head. Like a bucket of sh** in a really bad movie. Or like those buckets of blood they poured all over poor Carrie at the prom in that Stephan King movie.

Yah. Just like that, right down to the life Carrie had turning out to be a fraud, because Carrie would always be Carrie and she should have known better than to ever believe she could be who she was, really.

Well. I didn't know I was that scared.

It's like that Tom Petty song, SWOT. We don't have to live like a refugee.

Cedar

So, yeah. For you, and for me, and probably for you too Copa, there is some time pressure thing happening now. Maybe it is happening because we are healthy enough now to get it that there is a better way to do this.