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

[Copabanana]

Hi Cedar,

Thank you for your offer to check the thread in the future as very much I want to continue this work. Like you I am fragile today, stuff about my son, feeling like I did a bad and stupid thing, to respond with "blocking" the phone, a thing I do not know how to do. Worst of all, "block the phone" is not who I am or have ever been.

Last night M gave me a talking to. I had called my son. Twice. The first time reaching a busy. The second time it just rang. I experienced great pain and longing. Panic. I thought about how he must have felt, too, if he called when I did not answer the phone.

M's grievance with me is that I am not acting from myself, from who he knows me to be. His grievance is that I am not acting from love. He said, I want you to stop talking to that psychiatrist. He doesn't help you. M does not know the extent to which I have gained strength and direction from this board, nor did I say so.

M wants me to find the loving voice within me that is like his mother's voice, towards my son. M believes me to be a very loving and caring person, and he believes we are alike in our depth of love for family and others.

The thing is how to find the mother's voice if you never experienced it, or only experience it in realm of coinage and artificial value. Has it ever been fully there? Is that the question that you have been asking yourself, Cedar? Or more precisely put, did you ask yourself if the young mother of two children you were, with the strawberry blonde Rumpelstiltskin hair, "Was it that she did not have, then, the true, rich and strong voice of the mother of the ages? And how to find it now?" What a quest, I must say.

Although I did for a long period of my life distance myself from my mother in the way that you describe.

Before I go on, I will say this. M fears that I cannot, and by extension, we cannot go forth and create an independent, fun, easy, fulfilling life, in this place far, far away where we want to go--because he sees me, once again, in bed, destroyed, desperately pining for my son. Guilt-ridden. Self-accusing. "You will never be able to tolerate being far away from J. How can you. Look at you. You are frantic and he is a mile away."

Again because I failed to find the true voice of strength and love with which to talk to my son to tell him: No.

As I write this I see this. Painfully, I see this. In so many ways my father stepped over boundaries. I will not specific which ones or how. There was a time I said No or wanted to.

For sure at the end, I did say. No more. Already an adult.

And I left. I did not know it would be forever. But it was. I must fear there is no way back ever from No.

You speak about having chances, Cedar. And Leonard Cohen, too. Speaks of not having a mistake be the last thing. That we can go on from mistakes. And on and on. And more mistakes and on and on.

In my life this has not been so. There are so many fronts on this battle that I am fighting. I have just identified a new one.

NIJ posted on another thread a few minutes ago, the one about distancing from others, writing of her isolation because others do not know how to respond when we speak the truth about our children. She chooses, instead, to be alone.

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.

I the period while my mother lived, when this happened, there had been no way to continue a conversation with her.

As I had gotten older I could not still debase myself to be the person I needed to be to respond to her self-indulgence, self-involvement in the way that I could be, before.

And she stole our inheritance. Deliberately. Illegally. (I have the will, now, to prove it. Full Circle.) How to continue to string words together to make a conversation after this? I did not know. Nor, did the person exist who could do this. Then or now. I guess that is while I am still in bed. Waiting for the metamorphosis to be who I need to be to finish the conversation, that is my life.

like I was embarrassed and felt stupid that I needed a plumber.

Our essential femaleness of us was, for me, the crime. And the sexual and reproductive imagery, of plumbing, Cedar, here is unavoidable. We were made to feel as if because what we were we were defective, dirty...shamed at the most essential level, our plumbing, or lacking the correct plumbing. Shamed to the point of peeing on ourselves as not working because we pee as we do. Did your Mother hate you because you were not male? Or did she hate herself, for such?

There is an element of truth for me now, in this. Sometimes, I have a plumbing issue now, unrelated to age, I think. I have in these last months because I go out not so much, become to not trust my plumbing to feel that I am no longer in control, that my plumbing is anymore is not trustworthy. I have wondered if it has to do with the traumas, so many that have been at my door. My bed.

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 painful is this that it leaves me gut punched. Beautifully phrased, Cedar, as you often say, but too true. Sadly, too true, for us.

I will leave now saying a few more things to end. There is a sense of loss, might I say abandonment, that leaks out...that you are leaving...saying goodbye to this thread. I wish I had visited more. You will visit, you say, check in. You are and have a good Mother to us Cedar. I cry as I type this. As good a mother as I have ever had.

Thank you, Cedar.

Copa

 

[Copabanana]

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,

Yes, Cedar, I am 4 or 5 years older than my sister.

Committed to our destruction or something. Or committed to dominating us, or to gaslighting us.

I believe this, Cedar, but in a different way. When my sister was little, she entered a world in which I was a major part. Perhaps, I was more present to her than was my Mother or Father.

When my stepfather came she was only 6 or so. He was authoritarian and cruel, and his first task was to break me and whatever power I would have had. He never did, but the drama of his attempts were to define the family that we became.

My sister did not, never, ever have any options but to identify with him abusive and horrible as he was. She was too young, I see that.

Then, I believed she could have chosen differently. How could she of, at that age?

So, at age 6, she lost really, the only person, with my grandmother who really loved her. To gain, what? Not much. But I see now, all of it was determined. She had less control, then, of her life, than even did I.

I believe there has been gaslighting, domination, betrayal, I know so. I think my sister tried to get me back...to love her...by means hurtful and abusive. And she tried to get back at me, too. Of course she did.

Sadly, for both of us, I could not be enticed back by these means.

There is no way back to the tiny girl she was that I loved. I see sometimes in photos of her particularly, this vulnerable little girl. I Google her sometimes. Now over 60 and important and powerful and effective and competent and a boss (she is not a kindly one) she looks to me like a insecure, lost and needy little girl.

But to her, now, I am somebody to destroy. All of the things she has become in life that do not fit with her dream of herself, are heaped into her vision of me. And she wants to kill this; whether or not she remembers who I am, really, I do not know.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

When I think of them now, I get the chills...like a revulsion...hard to explain.

For me, I think that feeling has to do with knowing, on some level, that my sister is dangerous to me, and that as long as I refuse to see that ~ as long as I would stubbornly continue to disbelieve that my own sister was chillingly like, sociopathic or something to me, then I would be very, very vulnerable in a situation in which my mother and my sister were allied. Because it seems to me that what my sister wants from me is not relationship with me, but dominance over me.

That is what fuels her.

I think it is not even exclusivity with the mother.

It is not working through childhood times when I might have been prettier or any other thing that she was not, or could not believe herself to be.

Dominance.

That is what they want.

They don't want us gone out of the picture or my sister would have left me alone and so would yours. They want us enslaved, like a captive audience or...or something.

I think that because the conflict that came out of the call from my sister had to do with loving and loving my mother into healthy and my perception that I was making them both dead to me, to any future dream of family.

It has something to do with that she said that, my sister. That she would have picked that thing, those words. That is the key, is the set point, to my sister for me.

It is in that complex thing, somewhere.

I am not so clear on this one, yet.

It has something to do with that.

I was really so afraid of that phone call.

Or that visit from one or, a thousand times worse, both of them.

If I did not pick up, I had gone from feeling rebellious and defiant and sort of wrong for not picking up, to feeling way cowardly for not picking up, for checking before I answered my own freaking phone to be sure it wasn't my sister.

Or worse, my mother.

But I think, in a way, that is how we did the best we knew to protect ourselves from people who are up to no good thing at all where we are concerned. It's like some part of us knew that about them, but the part of ourselves in control of how we respond refused to believe what we knew darn well was true.

So it was protecting us from making ourselves vulnerable to them. But we refused to believe what we knew so we did not give ourselves words. Only that agitated, fear based hyper-awareness around everything having to do with them.

It was never them we were afraid of. It was how we would see ourselves, it was who we would believe ourselves to be, once they got done with us. Whether that would be whatever nefarious complexity my mother and sister have me targeted for, or whether that would be, for you SWOT, a matter of sniggering at your exclusion from the mother's Will from which they were not excluded and you were...it's like you have been replaying the trauma of that exclusion over and over and over in secret, where you can't see and address it.

So, here again, we are doing ourselves in, protecting ourselves from what we know and refusing to believe what we know could be true and beating ourselves up for it from both sides of that particular coin.

Another clinker.

It was never them we were afraid of.

It was us.

Because we would be the ones to believe those messages come of a toxic shame that should never have been ours, that should never have been hurt into those little girls that we were in the first place. But there was a time we did not know how wrong those things that were done to us were.

Now we do.

We never have to believe them, again.

They were lying the whole time.

About every single smallest thing.

Huh.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Worst of all, "block the phone" is not who I am or have ever been.

If I had known how to block my sister's calls, I would definitely have done it. We are new to this smart phone thing. But Copa, over time, I began to realize I was so happy to have time. I did not have to answer. I didn't. I could have that small blessing of time to figure myself out before facing her. We get to do that, Copa. When we are ready, we get to choose to call them, if we like, whenever we like.

Or not.

We have the right, and the responsibility, to self nurture.

Because in an equal exchange love affair, whether that is between mates or between family, everyone gets to take time, and gets to be sure, and gets to nurture and do self care before being expected to be strong and steady enough to meet that loved one's needs. In a way, it's a little like that conflict I was having about seeing the truth about my mother and my sister being like making them dead, like turning away from them forever.

When what I was really turning away from, when what I was really making dead, was my own denial.

It takes as long as it takes, I guess.

But I see now the incredible value in sticking right with it, in continuing to think it through until it all starts falling together in millions of pieces really, some wordless. some traumas wordless, because the traumas were inflicted, and the fear was seeded where our good, strong hearts should have been, beating away with courage and oxygenated blood and every possible thing we could need, before we had words.

And they took that away from us. And they had no right. Decency forbade it, Copa. And they had no freaking right, not in any reality real or imagined, to reach in and mess up your response to your child.

And I hate them for that. And I will hate the for that for you until you are strong enough to do it, yourself.

They had no right, Copa.

Decency itself forbids it.

Like, cosmic decency or something like it. That is what forbids what they did. And like the abuse they inflicted on us in the first place, way back in the beginning, the decency forbidding what they did, forbidding what they do, is an impersonal thing.

Nothing to do with us.

It just is what it is.

***

Copa? I put your father in my saddlebag on the Conduct Disorders motorcycle, too. Whatever he did to you messed with your ability to interact as you wish to, as you are determined to do, with your child.

So in he goes.

I think they are all in like, a holding cell in there. Until we can, not destroy, but devour them, incorporating what they have sealed away from us all these years back into us.

Right where it should have been, all along.

Right where all those good, strengthening things should have been ~ that especially, a loving, ethical father can do, for his daughter, and that your father somehow did not do, can be reclaimed and reintegrated.

And we will be very strong, and very centered people, when that happens, for us.

***

Copa, I had a thought about you, and about taking to your bed after your mother's death. I am just a person, so take it with a grain of salt. Could you be trying to die for your mother? Could you be trying to suffer her death for her, Copa? Or could you be somehow apologizing for living when she is not alive anymore? Here is why that would not work. You could be willing, in somewhere in your heart you have no access to, to carry her pain and the terror of death for her. But each of us is given the death we will experience to complete the journey we came corporeal to do, Copa. I think that because I have been there for people, and for families, when we die. And there is not always a change from fear to ~ oh, I don't know; a kind of blessed acceptance or something, but there usually is.

Even if you could take that pain or that suffering or fear for her, Copa? Decency would forbid it.

Here is a story. So, there was a patient who had lived a really nasty life. No one in his family would have a thing to do with him as he died ~ over the weeks it took him, finally, to die. But there was no chance he would be coming back. And he contacted a daughter. And she would come, and she would sit with him. Not for very long, but she did come.

This man, whether for all of his life or through some injury, was unable to speak clearly enough to be understood. Guttural grunts, gestures, facial expressions ~ these were the ways he could communicate. Well anyway, one day he kept ringing and ringing and he would have no other person there but me. And I was busy and I didn't even like him so well.

But I had brought him outside when I was able, when I had a few minutes to do so, so he could see the sun and so on.

So, that is why it was me he wanted to show this thing he was so determined to show me, I suppose.

And I went in Copa, and he was ~ it was like his face had been beatifically transformed. As though there were the most beautiful light Copa, shining right down on him. I'm like, looking up into the corner to see whether the ceiling had parted or something, right? And that is where he was looking for sure (and then, he would look to be sure I saw what he saw). And he would whip his head right back again, so he could keep looking up there.

And then, everything just sort of faded back to normal. Once he knew I had seen, too.

So, in a way, I was witnessing for him something I still do not understand to this day.

But it mattered, to him.

He lived another few days, maybe a week. I was not there for his death. I don't even remember his name, Copa. But I have never forgotten whatever that was, ever. I have never had another experience just like that.

But I had that one.

That is how I know that the phrase Decency forbids it is probably true.

Because I saw that light on his face when there was no light in the room.

So, somehow, that figures into this whole thing with your mom. How exactly that is...I don't know that part. But probably you do, and probably there is a reason I am telling this story to you. And it must not matter whether I know why or not.

But it has something to do with the validity of Decency forbids it.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Because it seems to me that what my sister wants from me is not relationship with me, but dominance over me.

It is not working through childhood times when I might have been prettier or any other thing that she was not, or could not believe herself to be.

I was given the title of prettier and smarter one. Because I looked like my Mother. In another, healthier family, there could of been two pretty girls.

To solve the problem I renounced pretty. Looked sloppy, covering my face with my hair. Self-conscious. I could not see myself, be myself compensate for the inequity for which I held myself responsibility. Whatever pretty there was about me, had been responsible for so much hurt and badness. I didn't want to own it. Not any of it.

I do not know why this is coming to mind but there are men who choose to emasculate themselves. They do so to rid themselves of their weapon, of their desire...with which they want to be rid, and hold culpable for exactly what that to, I cannot now remember or never did.

Female beauty has been through the ages, held as something alluring, powerful, corrupting, even evil. Where I am going with this...I am now not certain.

My sister has wanted to own beauty, of all the attributes that she was not bestowed by others, she wanted this. And she is claiming it more and more as she ages. Voluptuous, she dresses to enhance this. Youth, stridently she claims. One hundred pounds more than my mother she wants that power of beauty that my mother wielded for herself.

Where I fit into this, probably matters. A lot. As to why I have so aggressively negated my beauty. Maybe if I feel smarter a little bit down the road I will be able to remember why.

They don't want us gone out of the picture or my sister would have left me alone and so would yours. They want us enslaved, like a captive audience or...or something.

Of course they do. Because we embody pieces of themselves. Our pieces of ourselves they have introjected. Claimed. Taken over. Whole body parts and pieces, they have wanted to rob. And take for themselves. They remain tethered us until we are completely consumed and eliminated. The digestive pun there not overlooked.

I think that because the conflict that came out of the call from my sister had to do with loving and loving my mother into healthy and my perception that I was making them both dead to me, to any future dream of family.

Cedar, you are whole now. Any missing piece that has been robbed you have restored. Regrown. The powerlessness and the incompleteness is itself a memory that no longer exists.

She can no longer hurt you your sister, as long as you remember that the little girl stands beside you, with you. Your arm over her shoulder. But you are now not her.

Your sister is a complete sham. She is huff and puff. She barely exists except for an outline. Why is it that I am not thinking of the Three Little Pigs?

There is a story I want to tell you. We adopted an abused Boxer dog 5 years ago. 10 months old, I called her Dolly the term of endearment my Grandmother used for me. Not allowed to adopt her...because she was too damaged, sick and abused, I persisted and I prevailed.

Skin and bone and mange and broken was all she was. Except her eyes...and tail....What was left was love.

I taught her to bark. She had lost her voice. She shivered and shook at noise. Wanting only to be with us, near us.

Little by little, she changed. She became robust. Still afraid of noises, to be out on the leash (she had been afraid of people, of noises) she changed.

Over the years. This was slow going. But she changed.

15 months ago she got the type of skin cancer that dogs get. We operated twice and the cancer kept coming back...there were growths. More growths in different places.

There was a medicine, the doctor told us. New. OK. I will not say how much it cost. M still makes fun of me in front of his family for paying it. I get mad.

As part of her treatment I brought home another dog. Romy a Yorkie, himself just 10 mos.

Because Romy has a bathroom problem they spend the bulk of the time in the yard.

The upshot and reason for indulging me with this story is that Dolly changed.

Her instincts as a dog were triggered. Her strength and duty, bred for centuries. Tapped.

Her dogness triumphed I(with Romy's help) over all of the abuse and neglect that she had experienced. She needed Romy to support her and to help her in this, to reconnect with who she had been meant to be, who she was at heart still was, and is. She came to have no memory of it. None what so ever. She was whole. Completely whole.

Every day for her now is Joy. And Duty. While she wants to be near to us in the house, she is ambivalent. After all she has duties. A job. To do.

What I asked M are those? Bow Wow at the fence?

To her, he said, she is protecting us and her house. Is that not as important as anything else, we do or do not do?

We are all like Dolly. Please do not see this as disrespect. We love Dolly.

We can reclaimed ourselves. Fully. In full. It happens.

Dolly even got over her fear of the crate. After all, she had been caged and beaten. We had needed to crate Romy as he slept. He has a bathroom problem still. We could not crate but one dog.

Our solution, we took off the door. She was free to enter and leave at her will. And she chose it, with those terms. Dolly loves her crate. So does Romy. Go figure?

So, now that I see there are quotes remaining that need explaining, I remember why my Dolly story applies. This was Dolly, before:

...that agitated, fear based hyper-awareness around everything having to do with them.

And here, too:

checking before I answered my own freaking phone to be sure it wasn't my sister.

And now, the growth, the change. Dolly is our sister.

It was never them we were afraid of.

It was us.

Thank you, Cedar.

 

[Copabanana]

I did a bad and stupid thing, to respond with "blocking" the phone, a thing I do not know how to do. Worst of all, "block the phone" is not who I am or have ever been.

But Cedar, I told my son, my son, not my sister, I would block him if he continued to disrespect me. And I did not answer the phone for several days.

I am all fouled up between who is who in this tragi-comedy. I love my son. Of that I am sure.

Of that, I am sure. I may not know how to do this, but I know I love him.

We must be done with this, thread, Cedar. I feel as if I am grabbing your pants leg, to keep you here. And this I do not want to do. Perhaps if you want to respond do so on another thread...I will look to other threads, to seek to find you there. How poetic is that?

Thank you,

Copa

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I had called my son. Twice. The first time reaching a busy. The second time it just rang. I experienced great pain and longing. Panic. I thought about how he must have felt, too, if he called when I did not answer the phone.

Great pain and longing would be exactly the right things to feel, I think. We want so completely for our children to be healed, and we want for our relationships with them to be healed, but it's like there is static in the air or something, and everything gets all confused.

You did the right thing in the right time, Copa.

He will see that you have called. He will know, however angry and condescending or whatever other feelings he might be having, that you love him.

Mission accomplished, Copa.

Your child does not have to pick up, any more than you do. If he is in his right mind, he is probably as shocked at the way he talked to someone he loves as you were to be talked to that way. If he is not in his right mind, there is nothing you can do about that.

But you have done everything you can do, for now, for this time.

And that took courage. And really, given the traumatic things your last conversation with him brought up for you, it took a set of stainless steel...er, testicles.

Now is when you can know the panic and just sit there. That is just panic. You have been here a thousand times. It will pass. Just like with the scream, Copa. Now you know where you are.

Good job, mom.

He doesn't have to respond. What matters here is not so much that you know you love him but that he knows that.

Now, he does.

M wants me to find the loving voice within me that is like his mother's voice, towards my son. M believes me to be a very loving and caring person, and he believes we are alike in our depth of love for family and others.

M loves you very much. He sees you as you are. He does not see the hurt parts or the confusion. Head for that imagery of who you are, Copa. M holds you safe. That he understands and can validate that strong mother heart? That is how you will be able to see it, to find it, to comfort and to be comforted by it, again, too.

. Has it ever been fully there? Is that the question that you have been asking yourself, Cedar?

Yes, Copa.

We are born with it. We are born female. Mothering is innate. Remember the story I told, about Oprah and the school in Africa? They are all her daughters now, Copa. Maya Angelou welcomed Oprah as her daughter and spoke about mothering all of us, every one of us, through her writing.

It is like Dorothy and the red slippers that she thought she needed, or the heart or the courage or the intelligence. She always had those things that she went so far to find.

She just needed to believe there were there.

Where is that tender, strong sacred thing that is mother heart in you, Copa? Close your eyes.

There.

All the time, right there.

You can mother yourself with it, too. Like love, the more we mother, the more we can mother, and the more we can be truly nurtured, truly loved, truly who we are and have always been.

It happened to me. That's how I know that true thing.

"You will never be able to tolerate being far away from J. How can you. Look at you. You are frantic and he is a mile away."

Going away is the right thing. My D H took me far, far away. I always tell the story of arriving with nothing at all. We did not even have a proper fork. We had each other and our dog and our cat and that's all. And we knew no one, at all. And we made a new life because there was nothing there from the old one and that was exactly the right thing to do.

A mile away or a thousand miles away. You know yourself Copa, that this distance between you and your son now is a distance of the heart. It is the heart that will heal it.

And that can be done from anywhere.

Both my children and all my grands are hundreds of miles away from me in all directions. You know what we have come through, all of us. But in heart healing, it isn't physical proximity that matters. We can fall apart from our children or our mates when everyone is sleeping just a door away from one another.

I say, go to this new place, find this new life.

Do it tomorrow, if you can.

Just do it, Copa. Nothing to fear, right? I am on this site, or talking (or not talking, as is often the case with my own son) on telephones from which ever place I am in seamlessly. No one is sure, until we tell them we have arrived and which part of the country it is we have arrived in, until we say so. It doesn't matter, because we are talking about matters of the heart. Distance, physical distance, doesn't matter.

Go, Copa. Go with M. Here is a story someone told me. It was a Latina woman, Copa. She said there is a phrase for moms like me, who are so enamored of their children they forget they are women, forget they were women first, before their children ever came into their lives. Well, you know I don't remember the phrase. But it was in Spanish, and it meant like "more mother than woman". I thought about that alot. She was right, of course.

But I couldn't stop being that way?

Until D H took me far, far away from my grown up, so troubled, children, and created a new life for me, and for him and for us both, in that faraway place where all we had was ourselves, and our dog, and our cat.

True story.

It happened, to me.

I must fear there is no way back ever from No.

We come back from it Copa, we come back to it, but we are different when we do than we were when we left. So in a way you are right. But the choice was to stay in something intolerable enough that you decided (or I decided) to go, or to go on the hero's quest that is a life well lived. Those who stay shrivel and grow smaller and more afraid and more prone to fear. Those who go may die trying.

But they, at least, took the reins of destiny into their own hands.

No one of us can look back on every decision and say it was absolutely the right one and we have no regrets. Anyone who tells you something different is not telling the truth ~ either to you, or to themselves. We are all human, here.

We get to make thousands and thousands of mistakes. And at the end of the day?

We learn that our mistakes were our journeys, all along.

My daughter and I were just talking about that, last night. We were talking about the War of the Grandma's Baklava grandchild, and of how proud my daughter is to be her mother.

And of how it could have come to be that she is as she is, after all she has been through.

She chooses, instead, to be alone.

Me, too. Unless the person is valid. The artist in the gallery where I volunteer is valid; my Tai Chi instructor is valid. The 88 year old across the street is totally valid. those kinds of people I respond to. Not so much the plastic ones, the ones without depth, without that something about them that tells me they are like me.

There are books, there is music and poetry and writing and conversation with D H or my grands or my children. Those things are real enough for my time, now. I have been lonelier in a crowd than I have ever been by myself.

I am like, this mysterious person to myself, all filled with sunshine or really dark water.

Love it.

Totally entertained with myself.

For heaven's sake.

:O)

Waiting for the metamorphosis to be who I need to be to finish the conversation, that is my life.

That is good imagery, Copa. You know, on some level, that you will be getting up, soon.

Sometimes, I have a plumbing issue now, unrelated to age, I think

Two things, Copa. Tampons, placed correctly, will address pluming issues as well as surgery. So my professor instructed us, when we were doing anat/phys. Secondly, I think these issues around all things plumbing related come to all of us, male and female alike, and I think they make us human in a way we may not have been, before. So, we have to be more aware of what is happening to all those areas, all the time, just in case we wet our pants.

Or worse.

So, we do our Kegels and bring extra supplies everywhere we go, just in case.

That is how I deal with it, anyway.

Daughter had these issues too, just after the beating. And all we could do was laugh about how stupidly ridiculous the whole horrible thing was.

That is all we could do.

So, we did.

And we wear those little pads, and we carry freshness with us at all times and we just have to laugh at how stupid it could be that this should be happening to us.

But not in public.

We do not laugh so hard in public.

Ahem.

We are not that well adjusted.

Not yet.

There is a sense of loss, might I say abandonment, that leaks out...that you are leaving...saying goodbye to this thread. I wish I had visited more. You will visit, you say, check in. You are and have a good Mother to us Cedar. I cry as I type this. As good a mother as I have ever had.

Good, Copa. That is such a good thing to be. I like that very, very much. I can be a little like Maya Angelou, then. That is a happy triumph for me and for you and for SWOT too, Copa. For all of us, to mother one another where we can, and to do what is in front of us to do. I feel defiant and strong and good about this thing we have done and are doing.

I will be here every day, Copa. We will do what we do, and continue finding and giving and taking strength from all of it long after we have all come to that place where we are strong and oh, so steady again, on our own.

I love it that we are able to find strength in our brokenness, Copa.

You have made me very happy, to know that good thing.

Thank you, Copa.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

There is no way back to the tiny girl she was that I loved. I see sometimes in photos of her particularly, this vulnerable little girl

In discussing this feeling as it applies to our addicted or ill children, the women on the site taught me to see our relationships ~ not just with our kids, but with everyone ~ like this: Those good, beautiful things cannot be taken or changed or altered or tarnished or colored or polluted by anything that came, after.

And that was true.

And I found love for myself, there. And I found love for my daughter and my son too, even when they were being rabidly offensive people I was ashamed to admit I was acquainted with, let alone mother to.

So, that was a really good thing to know, Copa.

How to see like that, I mean.

Where I fit into this, probably matters. A lot. As to why I have so aggressively negated my beauty. Maybe if I feel smarter a little bit down the road I will be able to remember why.

I am thinking the answers are floating up right now.

I will be interested to hear how you come into balance around these issues. I feel that same way. When therapy first began working for me, I would only wear cotton. Soft, denim jeans. White, long sleeve cotton pullovers. I felt so clean, so honest, so without pretense dressed that way.

Now that I am healthier, Lord, I love high, spiked heels and glittery things and being kind of illicit in those ways.

I love it.

But I am too old to wear the heels comfortably now, and doesn't that just break my heart?!? But I wear my hair all messy and cute, and I don't care what my mother thinks about my hair, anymore.

:O)

The digestive pun there not overlooked.

I know, Copa. How scary is that?

Like they want to be us so we can be disregarded and they never have to compare themselves to us again.

My sister must not know about those little pads I have to wear now, just in case.

Heh.

She can have that part. I am like, totally sick of plumbing issues.

***

D H is waiting, Copa, and I have to sign off for the night, now.

Until tomorrow, then.

Wishing you strength, holding you and yours in my thoughts and prayers. If you need that mother heart in the night, you can google Maya.

She helps me Copa, every single time.

M sounds like my D H. I am happy for you, Copa.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

but there are men who choose to emasculate themselves

This is true, Copa. Your underlying theory, I mean. That is the little, core piece maybe, the beginning identifiable good thing that we grew into possessing against the will of our abusers. If there were any way they could have prevented our ascendancy at any time, but most certainly as they were themselves aging they would have done so, Copa. But they couldn't. Not in the horribly physical ways they hurt us when we were little and powerless, they couldn't. We knew then, how to go for help, or how to leave them altogether.

So we did it to ourselves for them. And that accounts for FOG wrapping itself around everything to do with body function or sexuality, for us, and for those hurt as we were who survived it and in time, came to possess that strength and power and rage that comes with adolescence.

Good work, Copa.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Over the past two years, as I have been standing up and figuring out and seeing who my mom and my sister are, I have felt myself more legitimately in possession of my stuff. Homes, sunlight in the morning, the taste of water.

With this tool you have figured out for us Copa, we will be possessing our female selves over time.

This is a remarkable thing.

:O)

Cedar

There is something here too about acceptance of our bodies and of ourselves as we age.

How extraordinary.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

My sister has wanted to own beauty, of all the attributes that she was not bestowed by others, she wanted this. And she is claiming it more and more as she ages. Voluptuous, she dresses to enhance this. Youth, stridently she claims. One hundred pounds more than my mother she wants that power of beauty that my mother wielded for herself.

So, my sister was pregnant without being married and without being in relationship to the male in any way. Not friendship and not dating and not in any way, prior to or after the pregnancy. And she was part of a religious group fighting against the implementation of abortion laws. And she would take money from strangers ~ on planes, through the mail, in any way that she could, because she was an unmarried woman about to have a baby instead of aborting it, and she did not feel badly about doing that. The status of pregnant with no male willing to claim any part of it, so shaming to so many of us should we have found ourselves in that position, was somehow turned into a virtue, was changed into a position of power or something like it, where my sister was concerned.

Somehow, these two observations about our sisters go together, but I don't know how.

Intentional...something about seeing how a thing can be used and then, using that thing to do it.

So, that would mean that your sister's intentional flaunting of female has something to do with power, and not with beauty, at all. It was your power, your essential self, she wanted to dominate and enslave to herself, somehow.

Maybe.

My sister is actually that way, too.

Dominance achieved by calculatedly taking extreme advantage of the advantage there to be taken, through presenting themselves, through marketing themselves and their situations.

?

That is the strength in them, maybe ~ the reason they seem able to fluidly adjust to whatever it is they want from the current situation.

?

Well, that isn't a very nice way for me to think.

No compassion. Not yet. We can incorporate and find compassion, for them and for ourselves, later, once we pin all this down a little bit.

Here is a story. So, my mom lives in a place 1) That my sister wants willed to her and has made no bones about presenting that case even when my father was still alive. I have posted about that. 2) My sister's justification is that this is where she and her children found joy and found family and spent time with her parents. After my father's death, that became "the place where I loved my dad." Other things too that you can imagine, but all of it in that same line so I will not repeat them here because they are extraneous to the point I think I am going to get around to here, any minute now. 3) The point being that, four years ago now, maybe five, my sister hired a professional photographer to create a four-generation picture containing my mother, my sister, her daughter, and my sister's grandchild. (The then-infant who would become Golden grand, the role SWOT posts to us about.)

But she wanted those pictures done in MY home.

Now, why would she do that?

And of course I gave permission.

And I neither expected nor was asked to participate in the four-generation photo shoot, of course. But it just occurred to me, or in any photos, at all. D H had the photographer shoot himself and our dog. Those pics were not retained, as far as we know. But had that been me doing a four-generation, I would have had the sisters, the mother, the niece and the baby. I would have had a females of the family made, with whichever females were there, with that baby who was new.

So, that means something, too.

And my sister keeps that picture of she and I in her bathroom. But things have changed now in the hierarchy of family, so probably that is not a true thing, anymore. A few years ago, my sister sent me a plaque: I just haven't been the same since the house fell on my sister. And the plaque was soiled, as it would be, from having hung in someone's pantry or kitchen for years. (That saying has to do with the Wizard of Oz.) The plaque is actually cute, and funny...but there is symbolism there having to do with a displacement I did not believe in when it was happening but that I see, now. And my sister said she had had the plaque hanging in her pantry for years and years, and that she wanted me to have it.

But that was a thing she had never shown me in all the times I had visited her there in her home.

But at some point through these last years, the plaque was no longer relevant to her but had become, perhaps, very much something she wanted me to know.

I felt badly when I received it.

So, that fits in here somewhere, too. With the power thing and the female thing and our own legitimacy to ourselves.

I still have the plaque, as I still have everything my sister sends me. I use it as a Hallowe'en decoration. I set it on the lap of this large, motion activated-skeleton we have. And he wears a tux and a tophat and his eyes light up bright red and he cackles, "I want candy!"

And I put him in a rocking chair as I have for years, and the plaque from my sister sits on his lap.

Living a life is such a strange thing.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Where I fit into this, probably matters. A lot. As to why I have so aggressively negated my beauty.

We were fortunate to find this piece, Copa. It's one of those things so private that it would never occur to a person that her vision of her physical self could possibly have been influenced so negatively by them, too.

But we found it. We found something that is there, but that we don't know exactly how to fit in with everything else we are learning about how we were formed.

Yet.

Good for us.

Of course they do. Because we embody pieces of themselves. Our pieces of ourselves they have introjected. Claimed. Taken over. Whole body parts and pieces, they have wanted to rob. And take for themselves. They remain tethered us until we are completely consumed and eliminated. The digestive pun there not overlooked.

Depersonalization then, rather than appreciation or recognition of the way the female line traces and reflects and finds honor and gratitude and strength, in itself.

Could it be that, or something like that?

Depersonalized. That is a good descriptor for how it feels to talk with my sister, now that I do not have that mothering thing, that place where the important thing is to hear their pain and say something helpful or strengthening, going on with her so much. That is why I could say, without rancor or any emotion really, "Why are you calling me?" She was rattling on about my mother and that man, or about her grandchild. (But never her daughter, now that I think about it and isn't that strange.) Anyway, about things that had nothing to do with the lack of relationship, with the months and months that had passed, since I had picked up when she called.

Depersonalization.

That is a good, descriptive word.

It doesn't hurt me though. None of it really hurts me, now. Posting and being heard and seeing the other stories that are as unbelievable and are so similar to my own, has been such a very good thing.

I have never been this free, this unemotionally unattached to my sister's every utterance, in all of my life.

I was thinking about what this new feeling inside me feels like, this morning. It feels like a hero (a male hero, which never happened to me before) standing under the stars, preparing for the next thing. Not thinking about the last thing. But only about where the journey will take him next. He is young, strong, in his prime. Well muscled. His eyes are blue like mine but his hair is black.

She can no longer hurt you your sister, as long as you remember that the little girl stands beside you, with you. Your arm over her shoulder. But you are now not her.

Oh, I like that imagery, Copa. I don't want to hate and think angry things about my sister.

That is a good imagery of compassion. Not her mother, but sort of there in the background of things. Not her mother anymore, but not out to destroy her, either.

We can be looking at the stars together.

But even in this imagery, I cannot help but to see her, smaller and just a little ahead of me...so I can catch her before she hits the ground, if she stumbles.

I am okay, with that imagery.

Hatred got us all into this mess; only love will take us safely out.

And just like it is with our kids too, Copa. What matters is not that they love me back, but that I love them well and strong and solid. They don't even need to know a thing about that secret that I know.

And neither does my sister.

Joel is on. Check you later, Copa and SWOT.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Your sister is a complete sham. She is huff and puff. She barely exists except for an outline. Why is it that I am not thinking of the Three Little Pigs?

I don't know. But it has something to do with the wolf being real. For every one of the three little pigs, however they looked at life and however well or poorly they built their houses and believed themselves safe, the wolf was real, and needed to be dealt with.

And at the end of the day? The little pig who built his house out of brick took the others in.

:O)

Maybe we are making a brick house, Copa and Swot. And maybe, however much we might resent the others...maybe at the end of the day there will be a safe place where we all can go.

But the wolf will still have to be dealt with.

And maybe, we will even find we have what we need to do that.

Maybe.

And somehow, this fits into that my daughter and all her children plan to be here for a time this summer. All of us together. And D H and I, and the War of the Grandma's Baklava granddaughter and daughter herself, have been planning what special foods we all want to eat ~ which things would each like to have served, for sure. So, I was thinking last night about that, and about where everyone would sleep and about that we only have one bathroom in this house and etc. And I realized that the preparation I need to do is meditation; is time for doing nothing at all. There will be a rush of preparation probably, but that will just be what I do. My work of preparation will have to do with quiet, with making an unplanned space for something different than I can know, now.

That all fits in here too, somewhere.

Dolly the term of endearment my Grandmother used for me.

I love that.

I persisted and I prevailed.

Like what we are doing now, Copa and SWOT. And you too, Insane Canadian. I saw that you had posted in on this thread, too. That made me happy, to know you were here with us, too.

What was left was love.

Like us.

Everything lost; nothing left but who we essentially are. And we are trying to get to the center of that without hating, without resentment, with compassion for all of us when it is time.

I hope that is how it happens.

I hope we can see them, can see our people, with clarity. Beside and maybe, a little to the front of us so we can watch over them, so we can love them in that way that we do, but separate people now, not all bound up in the hurt of it.

I really liked that imagery, Copa.

She had lost her voice.

There again, like us. So much like us.

Her instincts as a dog were triggered. Her strength and duty, bred for centuries. Tapped.

Her dogness triumphed I(with Romy's help) over all of the abuse and neglect that she had experienced. She needed Romy to support her and to help her in this, to reconnect with who she had been meant to be, who she was at heart still was, and is. She came to have no memory of it. None what so ever. She was whole. Completely whole.

Every day for her now is Joy. And Duty. While she wants to be near to us in the house, she is ambivalent. After all she has duties. A job. To do.

What I asked M are those? Bow Wow at the fence?

To her, he said, she is protecting us and her house. Is that not as important as anything else, we do or do not do?

This is what we do. And like it is for Dolly, it will be love that pulls us through this in an upright position, alive and vitally aware again, too. (I am triumphantly there with you, and with Dolly and Romy and M. Yay I love this story.)

Do you know that I heard it said once that a dog ~ just, all the things that they do ~ that those things they do are their mission of love. Licking us awake in the morning, needing special diets or special care, falling asleep and needing to be carried to bed every night ~ whatever it is that we do with and for and because of them. I think I heard it on Oprah's Super Soul Sunday. Every single thing, their presence, their existences ~ all animals and plants and by extrapolation, all of us ~ their missions of love.

:O)

She came to have no memory of it. None what so ever. She was whole. Completely whole.

Every day for her now is Joy. And Duty. While she wants to be near to us in the house, she is ambivalent. After all she has duties. A job. To do.

What I asked M are those? Bow Wow at the fence?

To her, he said, she is protecting us and her house. Is that not as important as anything else, we do or do not do?

Yes.

And who is to say which of us saved who or is saving who now.

My dog and my cat and even my fish save me, every day and every single night of my life.

Oh, wait.

I meant D H.

That was a joke.

All of those beautiful animals I named? Save D H, too.

Here is a story. D H walks the dog in the morning. But first, he has coffee. And the entire time D H is trying to have that first cup of morning coffee, the dog, eight to ten pounds soaking wet, stares at D H, willing D H to take him for his walk. And D H and the dog have this morning routine of D H becoming steadily more upset. And of the dog, moving closer the instant D H looks away.

So, D H calls that our dog's "Chucky" move ~ from that movie about the scary doll who comes to life and comes closer for nefarious purposes whenever you aren't looking.

Ha!

And eventually, D H takes the dog for his walk and then, he tells me all about what they saw, and what they did, and whether the neighbors were out and whether the dog had a successful poop this morning or not.

And then, the dog goes to sleep and D H makes our breakfast, unless it is Sunday. That is my day to make breakfast. And that is what happens at our house, every morning of our lives.

The war between D H and our tiny, tiny half miniature poodle/half Havalina black dog (also a rescue), masquerading as Chucky.

:O)

And our house smells of morning, and of fresh, hot coffee with cream.

And then?

Bacon.

We have a cat, too. Her name is Sarah. Our fish are being cared for by friends while we are gone. They send us pictures of the fish on Facebook.

Dolly is our sister.

And I always wonder, about our animals, who come to us in the strangest ways, exactly how we need it to be and they, maybe on some level, do too...whether it is true, after all that God exists, and that we all, every creature and tree and etc, are here on purpose.

All of it.

Everything.

I loved your story, Copa.

I love knowing about Dolly and Romy and the open door crate.

This was a lovely, perfect story for me, this morning.

Thank you.

I feel as if I am grabbing your pants leg

Be very assured Copa, that I am grabbing yours, too. And here is the thing. There are those reading along benefitting from our stories, too. Look at the thread count. We are all grabbing on, standing up, creating a tapestry.

Of that, I am sure. I may not know how to do this, but I know I love him.

I know. That is a good place to be. That is all I know, too. That is what I meant when I posted that we were all flying by the seats of our pants, hearts in our throats.

Crying.

But that is okay.

They are worth it. All of our people and us too, Copa and SWOT and me, too. We are worth every bit of whatever this is. And that is a thing? I never knew, before.

I did not know that about myself, before.

So, that's good, then.

I hope you come back to the thread, Copa. And SWOT. And anyone who has been reading along. But, if it is time? Then this is true: Nothing can change what we had, what we all created here for ourselves and our readers (if there are any) together.

Sanctuary.

Yeah. We did so good, you guys.

Cedar

You know what they say, about the ripples a pebble creates in a still pond, the moon's full reflection shimmering as the ripples spread while the moon remains, undisturbed?

That is what we did, here.

That good, good thing.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

But wait! How am I going to know when you are whole and healthy and strong again Copa, if we are not posting to this thread?

How will I know that good thing.

You will post back to us, when you are whole again, Copa.

Just say, like they say Julian of Norwich or some other female saint says is the only thing that needs saying: All is well, and all manner of things will be well.

Let's do that, then.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Dominance achieved by calculatedly taking extreme advantage of the advantage there to be taken

The person about whom we speak in my family may do that which is almost illegal, (Have to be careful there), had charges against her of racially tinged maltreatment of an employee (because she could do it, after all, she would).

Not only exploiting neutral opportunities which present themselves, or presenting oneself as an object of something or other to extract stuff, whether it be pity or alliance, or admiration--but actual abuse of people--we are talking about here.

Because she had a title that she and nobody else except perhaps her mother, thought was a big deal, my relative used to go to a 12 step group and give speeches about her recovery and ascendance into the stars.

I do not disparage here 12 step groups, I have gone too; I point to the need to exploit here, any opportunity to shine, to distinguish oneself as special, of higher value. What you speak of Cedar, as the realm of coinage.

But the sadness here, is that women always fear and perhaps know and fight against is that their initial value in the debased coin of their realm of origin, was low. So, as they change relative value in a newly entered value system, they use to expunge, flush away, kill off, the system of value in their origin economy, their family. And Cedar, since you in your family were a high value coin, you must be destroyed, for your sister to feel finally she has value.

When I was a young woman, already having lived independently for some 10 years, I knew a man, an older man. On my side there was never interest, on his, yes.

I was interested then in the stock market, and he was a sage. We were kind of pals. He could never understand me. At all. He told me, I remember, you are a high status female. A high value female, your coinage is in demand, highly marketable. Worth a lot.

He could not understand why I worked so hard, going to school at nights. He could not understand why I did not use my relative status, instead of my work, to gain...what I could in this life.

Maybe if I am honest, I regret it a bit too. Sometimes in secret I tell myself this: famous men, powerful men, wanted you and...

I do not know how to finish the sentence, but I know it is not good.

I guess it is because it is hard to not have inside of us the rebuke that it is somehow worse and more wrong to live as I did ....than as does your sister....who may dispute the assigned value she received and fight to change it....but does accept rather than fight against the monetary system the reign of the land.

Did women's lib pass me by, or what????

1) (Mother's House) That my sister wants willed to her and has made no bones about presenting that case

Well that happened here, too.

Entitlement (but then my Mother did this too)

I want it--I deserve it---I will get it.

My sister tried to get my Mother to will her a disproportionate share of stuff, and succeeded with 100K. My sister had her husband pressure my Mother...to not risk being disinherited (violating terms of the will, and to not violate ethical rules of her profession.)

My sister's justification is that this is where she and her children found joy

I hate her, I am sorry. M has something going on like this with one of his siblings. who has persuaded the father (mother has no power in this) to deed her their house. It makes me physically ill.

The situation has created a crisis for the responsible siblings (all here in USA), because there is a disabled, severely disordered brother (in MX), unable to care for himself, who this sister will make homeless.

There had been an informal arrangement where another sister would live with him in the house, and care for him. Could this sister care that she has un-ended all of this? No.

It is only a matter of having more, (feeling more) than her brothers and sisters.

The status of pregnant with no male willing to claim any part of it, so shaming to so many of us should we have found ourselves in that position, was somehow turned into a virtue, was changed into a position of power

Yuck.

D H had the photographer shoot himself and our dog.

Oh, so cute. Really, I hate this woman....She really does not want you to exist, does she? And is it jealousy or envy that drives her dislike of your husband?

I feel compassion here for us, you, SWOT, myself. At the beginning of life, of this coming down on us...like the plagues...and still existing, even thriving.

Your sister is doing everything in her power to negate you, dis-inherit you (property), sh-t on you, kill you off:

And my sister keeps that picture of she and I in her bathroom.

Oh poop, as you say.

I just haven't been the same since the house fell on my sister.

And I really do not have compassion for her. Well, I guess I do. If I see her like I see my sister in those otherwise professionally looking photos.

My sister is a woman of importance, you know. The funny thing is this by her standards: I am too. I achieved to a greater extent than did she. Except in my case I would use the word, distinction which does not imply relative worth, but to that which is extrinsic (I meant to say here, intrinsic), and after all can be applied to all of us.

Is that what we are doing here, fighting ourselves out of a system of relative value to a system of intrinsic value? Is this all at its essence about the economic?

The sad part for me is that I cannot compete. I take myself out of the game. I hobble myself, sideline myself.

Cedar, it is going to take me awhile to get to the rest of your post (lucky me, I have so much to work on. Thank you. I am having fun here.) And then I have not yet responded to your post about why, just why I am in bed. Lucky me. I have that one too.

Thank you.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I point to the need to exploit here, any opportunity to shine, to distinguish oneself as special, of higher value. What you speak of Cedar, as the realm of coinage.

I would add a chilling coldness of heart, in the sense that, born with a thing that is like empathy but without warmth or compassion...that capacity to see how people fit together would make it a very easy thing to take from them, or to take them apart.

A very easy thing, if you see what you see but you see without compassion.

That would be an appropriate description of sociopathy, maybe.

It would not require a feeling of less than (or would probably preclude that altogether) to justify taking what is taken. Which would tie in to why the wealthy man would not have been enough, or would not have been a clean thing, for you. None of my sisters husbands were that eye-catching kind of attractive ~ but they did have, or pretended to have, money and stuff. But here is the thing. When we have so little, we believe money and stuff are the things that will complete us, that will allow us to live without shame. When we once have enough ~ and they say the wealthiest people are those who live far beneath their means, because they always have enough then, instead of forever chasing for more ~ when we once have enough, a place to live, food, medical and things to think about and people around us that we love, then we see more money and more stuff as just more money and more and more and more stuff.

So that person it looked like we could stand to sleep with because he could give us all that stuff? All at once, he looks pretty decrepit and we hate for him to touch us and we don't want to have his babies, once we have had enough stuff long enough to forget what it felt like to be without stuff.

But maybe, if you do have the capacity to see but you don't have the capacity to empathize, then that is where hatred comes in.

Looks like I am beyond my depth here.

An interesting thing to look at in that light though, Copa.

you are a high status female. A high value female, your coinage is in demand, highly marketable. Worth a lot.

Oh, good!

I love that this happened for you.

Alpha female, Copa.

That's you.

:O)

Not only exploiting neutral opportunities which present themselves, or presenting oneself as an object of something or other to extract stuff, whether it be pity or alliance, or admiration--but actual abuse of people--we are talking about here.

My sister did something like that once. And it destroyed a life, or contributed to the destruction of a life.

And some time later, the person actually did die. And you could not say my sister's actions did or did not contribute to what then happened to this person. But it could be that what she did, maliciously and intentionally, may have contributed to what came next for him.

But the sadness here, is that women always fear and perhaps know and fight against is that their initial value in the debased coin of their realm of origin, was low. So, as they change relative value in a newly entered value system, they use to expunge, flush away, kill off, the system of value in their origin economy, their family.

I think I understand what you are saying, Copa. But I think, once again, you are being very harsh with Copa. A young, young woman. Beautiful, and without the strong, well-oxygenated core only a father could have given her, to know how to relate, how to see herself in relation to, the ever mysterious male who is just so enamored of her. For a minute or maybe, a lifetime. And how is she to know what to do with that when she has no core of strength to instruct her about things that are wordless, that pass in the flash of an instant.

So are you saying we discount the female in us, that we come to identify with the status quo, with the mysogyny our worlds are steeped in, to step into the male dominated world of financial power, identifying with them to the point of detesting ourselves for the female we undoubtedly are?

I think that is what I heard.

Remember the imagery of the Latina on the motorcycle in the Southern sun with the wind in her hair?

That is how I see you.

No man could be that.

Ever.

Only a woman can be all that a woman just is, without even trying.

And Cedar, since you in your family were a high value coin, you must be destroyed, for your sister to feel finally she has value.

I thought that once, too. But I think it is a colder thing than that.

He could not understand why I worked so hard, going to school at nights. He could not understand why I did not use my relative status, instead of my work, to gain...what I could in this life.

I do, Copa. I get that. You needed to know whether it was true, what your upbringing told you about yourself.

You had to know.

Not hide.

Know.

It's like when I went back to school. I had to know. I didn't have to do that. D H was ragingly against it. I had to know.

So did you.

Sometimes in secret I tell myself this: famous men, powerful men, wanted you and...

Aha! I am so freaking jealous! I would have been so wearing my high heels.

Did women's lib pass me by, or what????

No, I don't think so, Copa.

We had to know. We had to test ourselves. It was an integrity thing. And we've been that way all our lives, maybe. Each in our own ways...though I would definitely love to have had my integrity test be while I was wearing like, really high heels.

Really high.

My sister tried to get my Mother to will her a disproportionate share of stuff, and succeeded with 100K. My sister had her husband pressure my Mother...to not risk being disinherited (violating terms of the will, and to not violate ethical rules of her profession.

But how do they justify thinking like that? It seems to me that whatever wealth is left should be shared. That seems fair. This thing with our sisters...it almost seems that they want it to be given to them to prove partiality toward them on the part of the parent.

Against the other sibs, I mean.

I don't think it is even the monetary value of the thing, so much as it is to have been the one gifted with all of it to the public, right out in the open shame and exclusion of the others.

My sister is a woman of importance, you know. The funny thing is this by her standards: I am too. I achieved to a greater extent than did she. Except in my case I would use the word, distinction which does not imply relative worth, but to that which is extrinsic, and after all can be applied to all of us.

Oh, good. I like it that you have created success for yourself and your life and your son. I see where you are going with the distinction piece.

That is the thing I named integrity.

The situation has created a crisis for the responsible siblings (all here in USA), because there is a disabled, severely disordered brother (in MX), unable to care for himself, who this sister will make homeless.

Maybe the care of that brother, the defenseless need in him, will change the sister?

And is it jealousy or envy that drives her dislike of your husband?

I don't know. When I am having compassion for my sister again, I will say that she wanted what I had, or what would be the thing women who created their lives from the wife position have, but never was able to find it. So, she did the best she knew. But she was always that way, Copa. Even when we were little girls, she would do the meanest darn things. I think she tries to do better, but maybe, she doesn't know how. So even her goodness that she chooses to be or do, has a rigidity to it.

Or something.

Is that what we are doing here, fighting ourselves out of a system of relative value to a system of intrinsic value? Is this all at its essence about the economic?

I think we are figuring out what matters, what it is that makes a life worth living and where we haven't seen from the fullness of our hearts in the past, or where we have only seen from our hearts in the past. We are trying to see and make a coherent whole out of our human brains and our hearts, too.

And no one really knows how to do that very hard thing. No one does, Copa. Not in all of history has anyone been able to do that. But we have all done so many extraordinary things, in such amazingly courageous and independent ways, that we expect ourselves to be able to slip things into correct position for those good things we see in our hearts.

But where a well mothered (and a well fathered too) person approaches these questions from a position of grace, we are looking in from the outside, like always.

So, we are on hyper-alert, in a way. Frustrated with ourselves for not finding the solution and exhausted because at last, we realize and need to learn to welcome, that we are human. And that these are human situations and challenges. And that the messiness of it is okay.

It's okay, that we do what we do or that we did what we did.

We just don't want to be stupidly weakened, or stupidly vulnerable, out of willful blindness, anymore.

I feel different, I see differently, since doing this work, since changing how I see those I taught myself to love and extend the grace of forgiveness to. There are those who would see us destroyed. Why matters, but not as much as clarity of vision. It is so simple a thing Copa, to see them as they are. The enemy, the thing that made us vulnerable to them? It was us, it was how we protected them and not ourselves from them, all along.

Even when we were little girls Copa, and for reasons of their own that we are not morally obligated to figure out for them, our sisters never did love us.

They never did, Copa.

Huh.

The sad part for me is that I cannot compete. I take myself out of the game. I hobble myself, sideline myself.

Well, I don't think that is true. For me, and I am guessing for you too because you worked instead of wearing the high heels for the gentleman trader, we proceeded from a sense of integrity (or from your word for that concept, distinction) all of our lives. I don't do competition well. If D H and I go to the casino to gamble, I feel badly for the person next to me, who is not winning, if I win.

True.

You may be the same.

Our sisters were the guys hating everyone because they might win some little something, even when our sisters had all the gold, and every machine was paying off for them. So in a way, they are always seeing from the outside, too.

But their eyes are very cold.

Ours are like, distracted. We are thinking about multiple layers of things, all the time.

This could be true, or I could just be complimenting myself (and you too) like crazy.

:O)

Happy Hour here, Copa.

Tomorrow, I will read your next responses. I am enjoying this, too.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Alpha female, Copa.

That's you.

No way, Cedar, am I alpha anything. I am prey, Cedar. I have been prey.

OK. Let's walk this back so I can tell the truth.

I walk my own walk, as do you. Afraid, vulnerable, damaged...almost always I walked, or hobbled or stumbled on my own.

(Curious is it not, that I struggled so against permitting my son to do the same. Looking at that will be the stuff of another post---if I am lucky I may be busy with this thread, what is here already, for the rest of my life. Or longer.)

OK. So, it seems when somebody walks alone, even hobbled, it becomes attractive to others.

Because I guess it is not so common at least in the conventional sphere in which I find myself sometimes.

So, I become attractive to women and to men, it seems. Because I seem to hold onto whatever it is that I think is me.

Like you say, start with this one true thing...and go from there...

When you start from that which you feel, believe and know is a true thing...you speak with strength, you love with heart, you do with purpose.

There is a courage. A great courage that comes from this.

(I will look at when I can, how I put to bed this courage, this confidence of knowing... This, of course, would be worth examining.)

But the thing is this. An alpha leads others, that follow. I may have attracted others to me...but had no desire or ability to lead anybody anywhere.

(In fact M thinks me a bit of a fraud. In my work, of course when I work. I must point out that people do not, cannot work from bed, in my field) I appear to others as if I know something. M sees me truly as I am in all my glory. Hesitant. Timid, at times. Often afraid.

The thing M gives me, grants me, is my heart. I am a giving machine, in my work. And this M gives me. In spades. And he gives me integrity. He is proud of me that I love my work and will sacrifice everything to do it well, with integrity.)

So I will finish what was to be a very short and to the point post to negate absolutely any alpha-ish aspect in me or about me, the not-alpha female.

There is desire in others of others to break me. And that is where the idea of prey enters in. Because really, Cedar, you are right. This is a question of Truth or Consequences. And this is a serious, serious game.'

There is nothing trivial about what I am speaking. What I am saying I will let you know when I know it. But I want to say absolutely:

I was never Alpha. Only prey. Except I never, never ceded control over who and what I was, essentially, and that quality, which you have in spades, Dear Cedar, is highly treasured and coveted.

(Cedar, what is thread count, and where do you find it?)

 

[Copabanana]

But wait! How am I going to know when you are whole and healthy and strong again Copa, if we are not posting to this thread?

How will I know that good thing.

You will post back to us, when you are whole again, Copa.

I do not anticipate not posting to this board. But of course it will happen that each of us will move on. Sometime.

You have touched on the fear, the vulnerability that comes from virtual friendships.

I have not before done anything like this.

I was desperate, so I tried. This last thing.

I see it as not unlike therapy where we put forth everything, a hundred percent of our hopes, our fears...and the therapist is present, but not as she is in real life.

We exist and do not exist for each other, and that is the power and risk, of this thing we do.

It cannot take the place of a real life. For me, I really need to get out of bed, that is true. And I will.

What you have given me Cedar, if it were to stop now, with no new posts, would be enough.

I would want more, but it would have been enough. I am sad now with the thought of losing you, the part of yourself that you have shared.

What you share with us, many of us have not had. I do not recall having had.

I will have ME, pieces of me, that you have touched, woken up. Which was asleep.

I remember in an early posting, about Mother stuff, I posted something vague and flowery about love and regret.

You as much as slapped me in the face, Cedar. You knew the stakes. And you said them:

Your child is at stake. Was your rebuke. And it smarted, but I dug down. And found some of me there. The part of me I had tried to kill off after my Mother died.

(Have not yet responded to that lovely post of yours about just why I went to bed, and am still there. Lucky me. I still have that gift of a post, from you.)

And because of your generosity, to me and others, I recovered more of me. And created new things, that may or may not have existed but if they did, I was not paying attention.

You know already that I am and will be healthy and strong.

Your kindness and gentle caring soothe us and calm us. While you require that we step up and take responsibility.

So, I am posting to tell you Cedar that I am whole and strong again. And I will remind you of this each time we post again, on this thread or another like it, if we do.

Every single time. As if it is the last time.

And I will remember this and you always. Somewhere. I just hope there are a few more posts.

PS If this sounds like a love letter. It is.

This thing we are doing I am finding so captivating...
I burnt the rice. Not in any normal way.

That is how I do it. I bring the rice to a full boil. Reduce the heat and cover.

Except this time. I left the room while the heat was on high. To respond to a post. I went to the other end of the house. To post.

I smelt something burning.

Oh. Something is burning. I wonder what M is doing. Feeling all self-satisfied and content. I wonder what he is doing or somebody else is doing that may be creating a danger. I thought.

Sometime later. Stronger smell of burning. Oh dear. What is somebody doing to make it smell like the house is burning down? Foolhardy people. What is M doing to cause this bad smell? Like the house is burning down.

Sometime Later, Still typing, I am.

Sometime later. We are talking here maybe 45 minutes after I have noticed the smell of burning. Never thinking, not remembering for one second that I put the rice on HIGH HEAT.

I go to the kitchen. M is there hunched over a burnt cast iron pot in the sink. Burnt rice. Stinky kitchen.

Why did you not tell me you needed me to watch the rice. You could have burnt yourself and the house down, had I not been here. In Spanish.

Oh.

So that person it looked like we could stand to sleep with because he could give us all that stuff? All at once, he looks pretty decrepit and we hate for him to touch us and we don't want to have his babies, once we have had enough stuff long enough to forget what it felt like to be without stuff.

But maybe, if you do have the capacity to see but you don't have the capacity to empathize, then that is where hatred comes in.

Looks like I am beyond my depth here.

No Cedar. This is exactly what happens. Happened to friends. Happened to my sister.

For my sister, I think this was a real turning point. When she began to realize that all of her hopes and dreams' fulfillment may be out of sight. Up until then it all had been possible.

Where did any of us get the idea that we could or should have it all?

The house (almost) on the beach in a fabled city. Almost a mansion.

One begins to want more...in her case I think it was something to do with sexual love. Real love, I do not know. She had married a man for babies and for wealth and for security and support. And it came to be not enough.

And I think when she at last had seen that she could not have it all; although she sure, by anybody else's standards had a lot; she became bitter.

And began to justify ANYTHING at all she had to do to get what she wanted. Because after all in her dreams it was already hers.

It was then that the thwarted sense of entitlement became twisted to become: I can do whatever it is that I have to do...because I deserve it. Anything I want. To get what I deserve.

And because I have to do it...it is alright. To get what I deserve.

As I write this I wonder how it sounds, what we sound like to others. Like Desperate Housewives, or that Paris Hilton show, Rich girls in the country or something. Or some Reality Show where people think they are going for the gold in life and they have everything all wrong. Just all wrong.

I do not know how it turned out that little girls...with nobody and nothing...to help and protect them...ended up in this mess. Of feeling the need to have and be something special...in order to have any worth at all, to anybody. But that has been our story.

But that is how it was for my poor sister and I. We felt like nothing and nobody, unless we achieved titles, or stuff. That is the real story.

It is like really, the only way to feel that we were anything at all was to WRITE BIG these identities we created. Because we really were nothing at all. Felt like just nothing.

So we become Not-us on some level. Trying to negate the need, the abandonment. The vulnerability. The defects. By becoming somebody. But never, ever could escape the truth.

So the one true thing became the defect. For me.

Can I be alpha-female, after all?

For my sister, I do not know, what is her one true, real thing.

How this may fit in with my self as a mother I fear looking at, but will.

Thank you Cedar.

Copa,

Whole, healthy and strong.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

(Curious is it not, that I struggled so against permitting my son to do the same.

What an incredible insight. Oh, Copa ~ good for you.

It was when I could see that I had mounted and succeeded and created myself in spite of everything that I realized that same strength, those same capacities, were in my children. That meant they were safe. Wherever they went, wherever their paths took them, those good things I had taught them about themselves were there, inside them.

So I could let go of vulnerability or perfection, or of having to say the right words.

The right words are already there, inside them.

Right where I taught them they were.

Sometimes? I tell my children and my grands (and I have told my sister and myself, too) that they will have to be their own best mothers, now.

That helps me; makes it less scary somehow, when I don't know how to do these very hard things.

No way, Cedar, am I alpha anything. I am prey, Cedar. I have been prey.

I have a poem for you about that, Copa.

I will find and post it sometime today or tomorrow.

I have a karate class today. If I run out of time, I will post it, tomorrow.

It's one of those scary ones.

I may be busy with this thread, what is here already, for the rest of my life. Or longer.)

Ha! Me, too.

OK. So, it seems when somebody walks alone, even hobbled, it becomes attractive to others.

It becomes attractive to predators. In the wild forests, and in the cities and societies we humans create, this is true. It is true too though that, for the animals in the forests and for humans too, there is such a thing as compassion, as defending ourselves from the predator together. Buffaloes form a circle, a wall of horns to the predator and the young ones, the vulnerable ones, in the center. Humans circle the wagons, literally or figuratively. We create laws, so we know right from wrong. And sometimes, the law doesn't protect the vulnerable ones. But it does make it very clear, when those who have been hurt are ready, just who the bad guy was.

And once we know that, we heal with blazing speed.

Because we were meant to be whole, all along. It's just that we have been standing in our own way, protecting the stupid predator instead of listening to, and determinedly cherishing, ourselves.

We don't want anything bad to happen to anyone else.

That is why we do that.

We say, "There is so much pain in the world, already. I don't want to add to that. I will do what I can ~ whatever little thing that falls to me to do ~ to lighten the burden of evil in the world.

Predators?

They love that.

Eat 'em up.

That's why they drool and practically wet themselves when they see us. They are so stupidly greedy they don't even bother with dinner napkins. Their stupidly greedy salivations drip and glitter everywhere. And you know what we do, those of us broken when we were little girls or little boys?

We dab tenderly at the corners of their mouths, so they will not be humiliated by the depth of their greed to have us, and to hurt us, and to leave us behind.

It's all about the dinner napkin, Copa.

Thick, beautifully white, Copa. Just like that clothing I choose, whenever therapy is working for me. Something simple. Something clean. Something honest and real and without pretense.

Just like me, inside where no one can see.

I like what I said so much that I am going to post this now so I don't lose it.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

I got up early this morning. Way early. On the news was a short interview with Tracy Morgan, the comic who was in the horrific car accident hit by the Walmart truck that killed his friend a year ago.

The media seems to understand, accept and to honor his recovery, which has been slow going, and hard. There is somehow the attitude of respect. He cried more than once during the interview, remembering the trauma and loss of his friend. And it was okay.

My Mother died after I had cared for her for some time. There had been a lifetime of stuff between us.

Our relationship had not been enough for either one of us and just plain hard, too.

When she died, a lifetime of grief and regret emerged. And self-doubt and self-hatred that had been buried, too. I got lost in it all. The trauma as she was dying. The choices that were mine alone to make. Alone in hard decisions, hard feelings. Dealing alone with my mother's feelings as she fought to live and as she was dying. Understanding what her life had meant to me. Missing her while knowing that I had chosen distance from her most of my life, seemed impossible to surmount. All superimposed on a relationship between us that was conflicted and not enough. Had never been enough.

The thing is, here, that I got at least for a minute or two, is that I am Tracy Morgan, too. I have been recovering from trauma as has he. He deserves respect, and gets it. I do too.

That things that fell us that we cannot get up from. We deserve respect. I deserve respect. Comparing myself to others or to who I have been before is not just irrelevant, it is just plain cruel. Tracy Morgan is expected and wants to return to his life before. But nobody expects it to be just like that. And I don't think he is expected to be just like he was.

A lot I regret the years I have lost. 2 and a half years since my Mom got real sick and needing me. Over 1 and a half since she died.

What is going on here, I ask? What is the real life, the real person. The functioning old one, or this new one? Not quite up from bed.

So, Tracy Morgan calls upon me to find respect and heart, for myself. Life is not just a one way street. We go back and forth, it seems.

This whole thing is getting a little bit exciting. Even I am curious what new person will get up from the bed. What will she do and where will she go? I'll let you know.