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

[BusynMember]

I like the Rocky imagery too.

I *feel* like a tiger today. Tap into your inner tiger Copa and Cedar

We are strong.

I am amazed, when I look back, at all I went through, challenges included, and where I am today. Look back at where you were and where you are today. You will feel proud.

Don't judge yourself. Don't call yourself names. Throw the tapes in the garbage. We are loved. We are valued by many. We don't need the approval of FOO.

When you actually think about it, this is so true.

About death, a lovely topic, I know, but it was brought up regarding mothers.

I did not mourn my m other. I didn't even know her. She wouldn't see me for so many years that she was a stranger. The lady I saw in the coffin was totally a stranger to me. She had not looked like that the lat time I'd seen her. It was her choice; her decision. So I found I could not mourn. Now I have often mourned not having a loving mother, but that is mourning a person who did not exist f or me.

I will be devestated with my father. He is not perfect. Far from it. Nobody in my FOO is anywhere near perfect. But he loves me and I know it. He loves me as much as he loves th e others. That matters to me, maybe more than anything else. If he gets angry at me or I get angry at him, we both get over it and we resolve it, something E. would never do. That is a fact. I am not calling her any names. She was not forgiving at all toward anything I did, small or large. And it baffles me that she could not see why I would not want to give any money to one of my children and not the others. She knew how it felt to be less valued as a child yet she was furious at me for not listening to my dead grandmother's wishes that I did not agree withi. (Again, all facts). I think that enraged her above all else, but I have no idea. I do know she brought this up often to the others so I can only imagine how it ate her up and it puzzles me. It was not really relevant to her life. She never even SAW my kids, including my biological son. Oh, well.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

You are having more trouble detaching bescause you have more trouble seeing ugliness where there should be love.

I am having trouble, but as you noted SWOT, I am having more trouble. So that means I am getting there.

I feel that I am, too.

"Mary lied and there were consequences for that."

Thank you.

I like the simple truth in this, SWOT. I like it so much that there is no judgment call in it. That is a good answer for me. That is what happened. There were lies told; there were lies told again and again, and there were lies lived willfully and over time, like they were true things. The lies were intentional. The storyline did not change, not in all of our lives. It remains power-over. It remains seeing through a film of contempt for self and other.

You are right too that the way out of that circle is to stop judging. I have a quote somewhere that tells us we are a convection center through which past prepares future, and that this is a balancing act.

That is all I have to know for today.

I got all wrapped up in the consequences part. So I decided to just let that go.

I don't think most people are trustworthy or real friends

I agree, but would add that the concepts of friend and trustworthy change as we ripen into who we create of ourselves. Maybe that is why I stumble over believing the power-over dynamic in my family of origin could be a source of comfort or satisfaction, so how could it be what it looks like? I keep believing they don't see it, or that they don't know any better, when it seems, because of the rifling of luggage and journals and Facebook stalking, that they do, and that they are forever okay with themselves when they do that. It's like an army triumphantly parading around a razed battle field when they could be having dinner right over there, where the table is as big and as solid as need be, where the candles are lit and the linen is snowy white.

I never will get over that imagery. That's okay. I like it alot.

D H says that kind of thinking is why I have to be on my guard, once my mother is gone. I think he is right in his thinking about that. If my sister comes back then, she will say she has changed, just as my mother said that when my father died, and just as my sister said regarding my mother's behavior in my last phone conversation with her.

But I have changed, too.

I see you.

I see you back.

Do you mean that every time you saw him, it was like you were suddenly watching him through glass or that he was like an animated figure for a movie? That would be depersonalization.

Yes.

That is why the imagery of Frankenstein appeals to me. Put together from the pieces that were left, gone to ground and frozen in time, crying with the pain of the thawing. That is why I have to think my way through what a thing is and what is the right thing to do. Not so much afraid to risk vulnerability as incapable of risking vulnerability. In a way then, my life has been an exploration of love and hate, of connection and contempt and of choosing to cherish; of what that is and what it means and how it looks and feels. I can remember each of the places where that freezing happened. I have posted about them, here. That is why determining how to feel about my mother through "responsibility" shames me. That is not real emotion, or trust, or vulnerability. On the other hand, I am messed up around how to interpret and interact with my mother, not stupid.

:O)

That is why I am conflicted about turning away from her, or from my sister. It has to do with vulnerability and with appropriate boundaries.

I will read Boundaries, by Townsend and whoever. That is a concept I am ready for now. How to do boundaries. That is what I have been studying with all those strong women I have chosen to have in my life, now. Anger and strength and making endings is what I will study in that karate class I am taking. His take on it is that he will run away, every time. But he only runs a little bit. And if the pursuer is still there when he turns around? Done in two seconds.

***

This is from Mary Shelley's Frankenstein. The story is a classic not because of the monster, but because it describes something about how it feels to be human, and about how it feels to come real. It makes sense to me that we all have frozen places, that we all have hurt places, inside. It would be the depth and degree of the wounding, and the frequency with which similar woundings occurred, that would determine the difficulty of the thawing and the having and the healing.

"Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame and of enjoyment. Once, I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities I was capable of unfolding."

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I want to say two things here. I have been perplexed as to why my sister wants all the photos, if she cares little for the actual person. And now I get it a little more. The photos are better than the person, because they do not have the encumbrance of relationship and need. They do not talk back, especially.

They can be manipulated and exchanged. And especially,they can be stolen and robbed and use to hurt others (me) to avenge. And new and better stories can be made with them to rebuke and negate and kill off the original.

So photos too are a system of relative value.

One of the things my mother repeatedly said in the first weeks and months after my father's death was: "It's all mine." She meant the house, she meant the cars and the right to decide and she meant the stories. This was a huge and shocking and ~ I don't know. A triumphant part of my father's death for her. That she was the only one left who'd lived through it, and that she was the one, out of all of them, who would be telling the stories. When I was last talking to her in any normal way, she was plotting the death of my great-grandfather at my grandmother's hands. Yes, the grandmother who loved us. She had no evidence, just surmising, just old newspaper accounts of mysterious things that turned out to be nothing. She also told me my grandmother met and then, married the husband she was married to when I was a little girl (her third) when she was hired to work as a housekeeper.

None of that was true, Copa.

There was no murder. There will be newspaper clippings and sly innuendos and conjecture about my grandmother's possible role in killing off her supposed employer so she could inherit his house.

It's crazy, crazy stuff. I don't know what to think. That was my grandmother and I loved her. I will not read those stories. And that is why my mother made certain to plant them in my mind.

It's beginning to seem that the worst possible case? Is exactly the true thing that happened, in my family of origin.

Strange, once you see it, how many, many things were discounted.

We never had sisters, Copa and SWOT. Sisters are for cherishing in really special ways. That is not what we had. We will know now, to cherish ourselves doubly.

***

Copa, I am there with you in spirit in your sadness. It is like birthing a child in a way, Copa, to separate from them. It is painful and long and you have never experienced anything that tears you and heals and changes you so powerfully, before. If you are worried, Copa, this helped me:

A talisman. Something that represents your son to you, or the concerns of this time to you. Wrap it carefully in layers of cloth or of tissue Copa. Place it in a beautiful box, and put the box in a drawer of your dresser. When I was worried, when like you, I did not know how to face what I was feeling, I would take this talisman that was all I had of my son out of its drawer and out of its wrapping and I would love him, or rage at him, or do whatever it was I needed to do. Then, I would put it safely away, loving him with a mother's heart, and blessing him in his journey and reminding God to watch over him in those places he was determined to be.

I would light white candles for him Copa, to light his way home.

I still decorate with those white candles that are electric or battery operated at Christmas. Every year when I put them up, I think about all the mothers, and all the sons and daughters, and in a way, I put those candles in the windows to light their ways home, too.

It is Happy Hour. D H is waiting.

We are there with you in spirit, Copa.

I wish you peaceful sleep and a beautiful awakening.

For all of us, for me too, I wish that.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

We never had sisters, Copa and SWOT

Well, we shared the same womb as they did.

Does that make us necessarily close?

We had a big age difference and are absolute opposites in every way.

I had a sister, Cedar. She is deceased now, but I sat in her kitchen soooooooooooooo many days and nights while our kids played until they were too old to play. She is the one I told you about, Cedar. We were sisters. Even in issues in which we did not agree, such as politics, we laughed about it and there were never any hard feelings on either of our parts.

I have never been a big fan of DNA meaning that you have to be close to that person. If I felt that way, I could not have adopted children and loved each one, even Goneboy.

I am getting ready to watch some basketball tonight with D H. Jumper is at work. She is learning, for the first time, that you may have to miss programs you really like to see if you are working....lol. She works in a nursing home for the summer so there will certainly be no basketball games on television.

Tomorrow is her birthday, Cedar. Nineteen. My baby. And my anniversary is a few days later. Twenty years.

I know nobody can rescue us and that we have to do it ourselves and I did work hard at it. But I consider him my savior. Life has been so different and so good since he has been in it. You know what he did that I'd never had before? He not only LOVES me, he LIKES me! He thinks I'm a good person. He always says positive things to me about myself. When I am down, he is there. He is such a stable, grounded man, Cedar. He has taught me that peace is possible and lack of drama and conflict is possible and desirable.

The two kids we raised together got the benefit of seeing a very good marriage and both of them have expressed that they had wonderful childhoods. I'm sorry that my other adult kids did not have see the same type of marriage and the peace and harmony.

Ok, ok, ok. I'm babbling. Since I went totally no contact with all FOO (and no cheating by checking Facebooks or forums), and know for a fact that I have the willpower never to "check", I feel so free. I feel so good and I want you and Copa to feel that way one day. I think it is akin to cleaning the toxins from your body and finally eating healthy...you feel energized and new.

That is how I feel.

I know I will always sometimes think about FOO. That never leaves anyone. We are married to it. But I can now think about it without feeling badly about myself, like I caused it. There is nobody telling me I did. And nobody ever will again.

Cedar, I truly believe the best thing one can do when somebody is not good for our mental health is to disconnect. Why doesn't matter. Who is at fault doesn't matter. What you think or they think doesn't matter.

If two people hurt one another's mental stability, they need to stay apart.

I know this now.

I hope one day (and I know you will take more time to do this than me)...you may actually disconnect. If not, perhaps you will learn to be there but NOT be there. Do and say what you need to do and say, but not listen. "La, la, la, I'm not listening, not listening, not listening." E. used to say I was "tuning her out." This is a fact. She said it and I did. I learned to tune out the stuff I didn't want to hear. You can do that too. After a while it becomes automatic the first time you hear words that trouble you.

Cedar, you are MUCH better than when we started this.

"We are women...hear us roar!!!!"

Have a great Happy Hour.

Good-night Copa, if you are there. You are whole and strong and very, very smart and you are doing great.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

You know, this new psychologist is not the first one who brought up that I had symptoms of trauma (they did not call it PTSD).

Is the goal of treatment to clear residual trauma, SWOT? You do seem stronger, happier, brighter, since beginning with this new therapist.

This was right after my grandmother died and left $5000 to my biological son and didn't leave anything to my other two children. My mother was going ballistic because I wouldn't do it. This was the beginning of her worst abuse and final cut. I was telling this man about her and this incident and how it was upsetting me, but how I refused to do the old "I love you best" thang that went on in my family of origin. He told me that he wouldn't talk to her anymore for being so cruel.

Was it that your mother was angry that the grandmother left money for you through your child at all SWOT?

One of D H sister's died. She was unmarried and had no children. Her estate was left to D H mom. She split it evenly between herself and every remaining sibling. She would not hear of keeping the money for herself. She did not want it hanging over everyone's head. She wanted it to be fair and she did it and the money was sent out and that was that.

it did not occur to me that *I* could cut out anyone from my own family

I wonder whether there is a certain kind of mind that can intend to cut someone out of the family SWOT, and a different kind of mind in which to think in that way would never occur. If that could be true, and given the genetic connection to personality, it could be true, then that would explain why we are having such a tough time ~ you and me and Copa, too (well, not you, anymore) with declaring an ending. We all have posted about leaving them and going back, about how hurtful it is to see them cry or be troubled, even when we know they have been terrible jerks. We all have had such a terrible time (well I have, for sure) with detachment parenting where our kids are concerned. Right to this minute, I have to keep my detachment toolbox right with me to stay where I need to be with my kids and grands. It could be that we were hurt into these mindsets, I get that. It could be a question of such rotten self esteem, or of the myriad confusions of codependency, but I am thinking this morning that there could be personality types who see from a centered core and personality types who...I don't know. See into the core and recognize ourselves and everyone else all together might be a good way to describe it.

I am not so Christian a person, or so Buddhist. But I have been thinking about how those teachings describe knowing how rotten any of us can be and accepting that as something that can be changed, that is a choice. Over the past few days, I have felt so sad about all of it where my family of origin is concerned. All at once, I awakened this morning without the sadness. I heard the Rocky theme in my imagination. It was a good, but a remarkable mood to awaken into. The difference is that I feel no guilt. It is like choosing to go with detachment parenting theory in that way. A reasoned response; an understanding that surely they (family of origin) do know what they are doing. Which frees me, somehow.

Well anyway.

That's where I am this morning.

Clarity.

Even though it was done to me by my mother and sister, it did not occur to me that *I* could cut out anyone from my own family.

***

"Whatever is happening is okay. You will know how to handle yourselves. Relationships are long...there is no such thing as ruining them or missing an opportunity in a single moment. If he has changed and is reaching out, there will be more. If he is being manipulative, you have created space and strength and will recognize it and protect yourself."

I really like this. It has something to do with those concepts of fluidity versus rigidity in that article you posted for us, SWOT. Echolette's thoughts on Seeking's son helps center me in regard to family of origin issues. So here again, could it be that there are people who shun, and people who have a real problem shunning. But I can balance myself between regarding what is undeniably true about my family of origin and turning away altogether. That is what I see in this paragraph Echolette wrote.

How to see that balance, and how to know where the center of the thing is, however the outer rim changes.

I read that in the autumn of our lives that is when we tend to sit back and wonder what our lives meant. I guess that's why so many of us oldsters are examining all we have seen and heard. And the truth of what was and what wasn't.

Well, the thing is that they keep doing it. For you and for Copa, the mother is gone and they keep doing it.

And we just can't make sense of it. That is why we are doing this now, We are old and wise enough ~ and strong enough, and we must never let go of acknowledging the strength it takes to do what we are determined to do ~ we are old and wise enough now to know these situations with our families of origin are weird in an unfixable way. I think that is true about what this feels like. It's like a mosaic that isn't coming together right at all. So we are recreating the mosaic, recreating that moving thing that reflects us and tells us who we are.

When the tiles of that mosaic first composed in blood on stone fall seamlessly together, revealing no face but her own
Then witch and Child, awakened repossess the cauldron and claim the loom
reweaving tales first told in ancient blood on stone

However that poetry goes.

Copa, if you haven't seen it and feel it might be helpful to your process, I will find and post it here for you in its entirety.

This is our time to reflect, to learn, and to truly enjoy our golden years and I plan on it. You should too.

Yes, I think that will happen for us. Maybe, especially given the way I seem to have to figure out the ethics of the thing before I can let go, happiness itself will be a wilder, more risk free thing when we are finished here. I think it might be very true that I have lived my whole life waiting for the other shoe to fall. That feeling, that expectation that the bottom will surely fall out without a speck of warning ~ proceeding from this point free of the certainty of that belief would change everything about our lives.

It would be possible then to just be where we are.

Right there, rightfully in the center of ourselves, confident that we will proceed correctly. Which sounds confused, but I cannot find the exact words because though I can see it, I am not there yet.

But it would be very good, if that could happen for us.

Life will be a thing of vibrant colors and flavors unlike anything we have known.

He took them each weekend or so in between his two wives as he could not stand being alone, then he disregarded them completely after he married again. If I had know he was forming a false bond with my young boys that he did not plan to keep up...no, he never even sent them birthday cards after that. What does that say about him?

This is the uncle who used to try to scare me when I was very young. The one I can picture in my room way, way back when my parents lived in Chicago. Must have been before I was five years old as we had a house by then.

What a prize.

It is like my sister, in a way. Every reflection reflects only her. No one and nothing else is real. It goes back to that mindset that can cut family in or out at will, maybe.

He sounds horrible.

Predator.

Another stupid predator.

my FOO disliked me so much that my dear children never knew any of them.

I don't know if that is a true way to remember what happened to you, SWOT. I never knew my family disliked me, but it turns out they hate me. Like a moving, bitterly virile hatred that has no reason and never, ever stops. So how could it be that they disliked you, personally you, the who you are in your heart, when the engine at the cores of our dysfunctional family systems, though we all describe it differently, is that same merciless, virulent hatred?

That's the thing. There is no mercy in it, in whatever it is that lives and thrives at the cores of our families of origin.

Maybe that is why it is so hard for us to grant mercy to ourselves.

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

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

Tis mightiest in the Mighty.

Shakespeare
The Merchant of Venice

Maybe that is why I love that quote. It taught me how to know the feel of mercy.

Always the outcast in my thinking

Well SWOT, I think it might be that you and I and Copa too just always did see true things.

Why bring him up?

That happens for me too, as we go through this. Some errant something "pings" and pings and pings and I cannot imagine why that matters. Remember the WalMart episode with my mother and the dream I had then and whatever else was attached to it. And each of those seemingly unrelated things were key remembrances to help me put together an essential piece.

So I think that is why those remembrances are here now with such insistence, SWOT. You are clearing, or preparing to clear, something you are ready to heal.

We are right here, Copa and I. And your new therapist sounds like a strong, able person.

You go, girl!

Now my mother's go-to topic when waking me up at 2am in the morning

My mother did that, SWOT.

What kind of mother is it I wonder, who disturbs her own child's peaceful sleeping because she does not have the courage to face her own middle of the night thoughts?

A coward, that's what kind.

I suppose they convinced themselves somehow that we were appropriate targets for those feelings they could not face in the night. It makes sense that this would be so. They abused us in the daytime to relieve those same feelings.

That is why there was no one in my mother's eyes when she did what she did.

She was seeing inside.

Well, you know what I always say: Something very bad must have happened to our mothers. As we heal, we are teaching ourselves that what happened to them had nothing to do with us, so we can let the guilt of it go.

That makes sense to me. And I think it is an important guideline for us in our healing. We dance around the issue of who was responsible for what our others did. (I do, anyway.) And I end up taking responsibility and trying to exert control and trying to smooth the chaos. What we need to do I think, is completely understand that it was never that our mothers did not like us or love us. I think they did. It was just that when they were in the grip of whatever has them, they did not see us, at all.

Or maybe, they did. And that is why they focused on us.

And I know this sounds weird too, but maybe? They were exactly right. We have carried what we have carried. We seem not to have passed it on. Even now, even choosing to unravel it now, is a choice for us.

A courageous one.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

The only difference is that anything he did, even if it was the same thing I did, was embraced. And everything I did, even if it was what he did, was denounced.

I think no one was embraced in my FOO. The pieces are fluidly interchangeable.

Remember that article SWOT posted about rigidity and fluidity in families? Well, there is the fluid part about my FOO.

Victims are entirely interchangeable targets.

The thing that never changes is the hatred at the core of it.

So I thought this was going to be a clever joke. Like making fun of what fluidity is for my FOO. Turns out to be a true thing instead.

So instead of laughing, I am a little horrified, and find myself amazed that any of us could have survived it at all. So, each of us in my FOO must have great courage, too.

I find myself wondering if he truly liked his students or just wanted to BE well liked and liked attention, especially from good looking female students

Ha! My first karate instructor had been a professor. And it was an interesting thing to see the changes in him once he'd retired. And more change still, once his wife retired and set things to right regarding ego issues, at home. Professors wield such power, and for them too, power is corrupting. So you are probably right on in your assessment of this person. That is what I meant, when I posted that some of us sort of see to the core of things sometimes without meaning to or even, knowing what we know or making a big deal about it when we do talk or think about it.

Family members who will always shun, who find ways to do that in all their interactions, and family members who cannot shun.

It could be a genetic thing.

Fun and Fraud in my Family

You are so funny, SWOT.

So sweet, and so funny. I am going to begin thinking about my FOO that way. FF/FOO

Fun and Fraud.

I love this.

Very little upset my mom about my life.

I have that feeling about my mom too. Very much that I was on my own. That is part of the reason I am so surprised at the lengths everyone seems to have gone to, to destroy all of us now, when our family (D H and mine) has been so freaking, outrageously, neverendingly troubled.

Yes. Just like that. I didn't know she was looking. No help with that first baptism, no help with anything ever ~ and then all at once, such sharp and unremitting focus.

Note I did not say help. My mother and my sister seem to have done everything in their power to destroy whatever was left for me. And to hate our recovering ourselves and going on.

Like a hurricane or something, that keeps coming back.

Ashes, on the westwind blown

I should just go ahead and post that whole poem for myself. I certainly am going back and back to it.

Probably I will, then.

But the truth is, Uncle Vain was tied to his mother's umbilical cord his entire life emotionally,

So Uncle Vain may have been the sister, may have taken on the role each of our sister's seem to have taken.

Can this explain anything about your mom, about the patterns?

And I'm grateful. Grateful that they were never Grandma, Great-Uncle, Uncle or Aunt to my kids, most of all. So grateful I could cry

When daughter told me what she'd posted to my sister on her public FB page in response to what my sister had done to her, and to me? She opened the conversation in which she described what she'd done with: "Mom, you're going to be really mad at me, but this is what I did."

She was so happy when I celebrated that with her instead of being shocked.

:O)

This is a synopsis: Aunty Terrible Aunt, you hurt me when you did what you did, and when I thought how wonderful it was to have family to help us recover ourselves, even when we have fallen as far as I'd fallen and been hurt, and had hurt others, as I had, and then, you shunned me. So, I was thinking, Aunty So and So, just how similar our lives have been. We both have had children born out of wedlock and fathered by different men. We both have been married and divorced, and we both have had to struggle in the world, and to make it on our own. Keep in mind that my sister is rabidly fundamentalist in her religious affiliation and identity, today. Daughter went on in this vein and then said ~ wait for it because it is so totally cool and perfect ~ that the only real difference between them was that Aunty So and So had done this really bad thing over time (which is a true thing that only family could know) and that daughter never had.

It was so perfect a thing for daughter to have done, just as publicly, and in the same forum, in which her aunt had chosen to hurt daughter.

HA!

Daughter took it down the next day.

That's why we shout to ourselves "NONONO!" And it takes so long to face it.

Yes.

Remember, this is not new behavior. It is just new to us...our realization of it. That's how I look at it. And I feel pretty darn silly that it took me this long to get it all figured out

Yes that is exactly right. I do feel so stupidly foolish to have believed as I have. At the same time, someone has to believe or how are any of us going to find our ways out of the circle of hatred and vengeance.

So I had to dance around those issues for a little while. I was always posting about having been a fool for lesser things. Maybe that is still true. It was not a bad reason to choose to believe in. It just didn't work, that's all. No matter what we did, it never seemed to help any of us. When she did that to my daughter, I started to hate my sister.

I still hate what she is.

Did I post that my sister private messaged me, that she'd asked on the phone what was happening with daughter and I'd been non-commital and that she private messaged, asking again for the details, for the details of the horrible things that were happening to daughter? That I responded: What do you want to know.

I was getting healthier already back then.

And that my sister posted back: I already know.

She did that, to me.

And what I feel for her now is not the bright immediacy of hatred. Hatred is there, but it does not require vengeance, if that makes any sense. What vengeance there was to be taken was completed beautifully by my daughter, as was her right, her ethical right. And she handled it beautifully. It isn't disappointment or forgiveness. It is a feeling of no mercy.

No mercy.

For my own little sister.

That surprises me, too.

Daughter is the one who convinced me to begin taking my sister's calls again. She said I was someone who could help us all to see differently. So I did take my sister's calls again. And I have posted about the matters my sister wanted to discuss instead of anything that could possibly matter.

But when I took that last call from my sister, it was not for my daughter's sake, it was for my own.

And from the good work we have done here, my interactions with my FOO will be my own, too.

And not for their sakes, at all.

And not for my sake, either. I am fine with no interaction, ever again. I was telling D H last night about Copa's post about the woman who was so uncertain about how she would fare once her own mother had died, and that she felt nothing one way or the other about her choice to turn away.

D H said "Of course."

That is the difference between D H and me. He just knows those kinds of things in his bones, and I have to struggle very much to get there.

But with good therapy (you shouldn't give up on a good WOMAN therapist)

I thought about this alot yesterday after reading this part of your post, SWOT.

Wouldn't that make a loving family more understanding?

Absolutely. The Kennedy family had a sister born with Down's or some other thing that affected her seriously. And they created change in the entire mental health system and started Special Olympics.

So now we know how it is supposed to look. Even in that family, so committed to excellence in all things, the member who was so different was sheltered and cherished and for her sake and in her name, they changed the world.

When I thtink, those Mother tapes in my head, "My sister hates me and my brother also things I'm bad, so it must be true or they'd be talking to me because they are so nice"

I do see those good changes in how you see your family and the truth of your role in it happening for you, SWOT.

It has been an honor to walk it with you.

I am stronger in facing my own issues because of the work we do, here.

F them

Yeah! What she said.

:O)

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

Was it that your mother was angry that the grandmother left money for you through your child at all SWOT?

Cedar, my mother didn't one bleep about my children. None. This wasn't about me either because she didn't leave it to me. She left it to a child of mine that she did not even bother to keep up with. She flushed him down the toilet, same as me, calling him only to berate him for not giving him his SSN.

I am not quite clear on the intensity of her rage over this. I think it was because she had this idea that SHE had to listen to her mother's wishes, dead or alive, nice or not, and so *I* had to also. But I wouldn't play the game of "He's my blood so the other two human beings you love don't count to me...yet I will make YOU give all the money to just one child." Nope. I wouldn't play. That made my grandmother, who k new I would not play, put my mother in charge of dispensing the money to my son at a certain age. The rest of it is not clear to me. I guess it cost her bout $100 a year in taxes to have this account so she wanted to put it in my son's name so it wouldn't cost her the whopping $100 a year. When I would not comply by giving her the SSN, she called him and he didn't know it. So she called him a liar or said he was lying. As you pointed out, they are actually two different things, but in our house we did n Occupational Therapist (OT) make those sort of accusations so he came down upset and puzzled.

I did not want to deal with my mother at that point. I was furious because I knew she didn't give a damn about Bart and to me she had given up her right to be able to call him by disowning him as a grandchild. I told my husband or fiance (think fiance at the time) to call her back and make sure she didn't do it again. I told him I'm afraid of what I'd say if I did it, yet I didn't want to risk her ever calling bart again.

He did it. He sounded fretful, bu t certainly not the way I would have sounded.

So she hated him. He had no right to call her. How dare he. Only SHE had the right to call somebody she didn't know and try to manipulate something out of him (meaning her disowned grandson, who had done nothing wrong except being my child). I think her extreme rage (and it was rage) was a combo that my hub/fiance dared to call her, although she had called my son, and the fact that I would n Occupational Therapist (OT) do the mean thing my deceased grandmother wanted me to do.

My grandmother actually stuck it to my mother because I had told her I absolutely would never do it. I'd divide the money. She asked her favored grown child Uncle Vain to do it, but he refused. At least he was smart enough to refuse. Of course, I'm sure he got no flak for his refusal. Then she went to her second favorite child, her daughter, and I guess s he asked her to do it and they probably argued about it (knowing their relationship), but in the end shes agreed to it. That is her fault. She made the choice to enable my grandmother's choice, which caused consequences for her.

I hear she bombarded the others with calls about this and that even they got sick of it and refused to listen. So this incident seriously made her nuts and it was much worse between us after that, but to this day I feel I did the right thing.

What a cruel way to try to make two of my kids feel like garbage.

But she played it out like she was the victim. I truly believe that's why she disowned me.

Yes, I know it is nuts.

But she had problems of her own, like the rest of us. She was not going to impose them on my kids.





































I di

 

[BusynMember]

Is the goal of treatment to clear residual trauma, SWOT? You do seem stronger, happier, brighter, since beginning with this new therapist.

Cedar, I am stronger because I have 100% disconnected from the remainder of FOO. I don't peak on FB. Thing 2 has her FB blocked for the most part, but Thing 1 has his posts all exposed for everyone to see. I never checked often, but I did check once every two or three months or so. That stops as of the day I swore it stopped (grin). No more. That is almost like talking to him. (I am always grateful I never read his condemning letter to me. I can't state t his enough. That stopped a lot of resentment and anger toward him. He is easy for me to dismiss).

I do not go to Thing 2's board.She can say whatever she wants to her anonymous crowd, but she wont' get me to read them and, in a sense, talk to her. Cedar, if she is still reading this, and it wouldn't surprise me if she were OR were not, I am still talking to her. I am still renting space in her head. It isn't good for her. She should stop.


It was the therapists's suggest that I never read anything from them again, even if it is not sent to me and to disconnect from reading their social media as well. And it has been exhilarating. The key is the lack of reading their thoughts or seeing their images. And, thank you, I am MUCH calmer and happier. I realize it is up to me if they ever touch me again, even in this world of the internet.

Cedar, I have a lot of willpower.

 

[BusynMember]

Well, you know what I always say: Something very bad must have happened to our mothers. As we heal, we are teaching ourselves that what happened to them had nothing to do with us, so we can let the guilt of it go.

I agree. I think my mother lived a similar life to me. She claims that not only my grandmother but my uber-quiet grandfather favored Uncle Vain many times over her. That isn't healthy and it created a pattern in her that she repeated. My mother told me that my grandmother said, "Your brains are in your feet" to my mother, who never was allowed to go to college because girls didn't. Her son got a Ph.D. It didn't make him kind, but he was educated and smart and my mother, I believe, felt badly that she was not educated and was not thought of as smart.

My grandmother explained to me a few times what she meant by "Your brains are in your feet." My mother was a gifted dancer. So she meant her dancing was where she was...I don't know...talented? Smart? You figure it out. I never got more of an answer that that, but it bothered my mother a lot. I know from talking to my grandma almost every day that my mother tossed this in her face often and then grandma would call ME all upset about it.

I know little else about my mother's upbringing because everything was a secret. Except that.

 

[BusynMember]

Maybe that is why it is so hard for us to grant mercy to ourselves.

Here's a secret, Cedar.

With them all out of my life totally, no lying to myself by peeking, my life is good and calm again. I not only grant mercy to myself, I can see myself as a good person again, at least sometimes.

I don't know if it can be done while they, and their condemnations, are still around. I couldn't do it with them around.

 

[BusynMember]

I am stronger in facing my own issues because of the work we do, here.

This is better than group therapy for me. I worked out a lot of stuff here.

Thank you!!!

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I am sickly addicted to books about abused children.

You continue to post that as your sibs refuse to validate what you know to be true, then maybe you weren't abused, or maybe you weren't abused badly enough to justify what you seem to remember with such clarity that you cannot let it go. Like I do, and like Copa does too, we are approaching and trying to define or to figure out ~ well, like I did. Just who is the guy lying his pants off around here. And for me, it is turning out to be my mom and my own for heaven's sake sister. And it was a little circling place for me before I could acknowledge and then, admit and claim what had always been true: They lie.

Remember how much trouble I had with that piece, too?

Copa, you are there too, trying to put all those ratty, disparate pieces together to make some coherent whole. All I can conclude is that we are not like them. Just like it is with the way D H thinks so certainly and so easily, and the way I have to work so hard to see with that kind of clarity. But here is the difference: D H sees right away. He is clear about what he's seen, and he makes no bones about it. It is what it is from the get go.

But D H is a kind man, in his heart. He is an ethical man, down to the roots of his hair. He is fair. He is generous. He owns up to his mistakes (or to mine) and forgives and goes on to have dinner, and to celebrate life and being alive in those ways.

Those in my family of origin are none of those good things.

My therapists said that I am trying to find my own story in those pages, but I don't get that, really. These kids had it worse than me. They were abused physically and sexually too sometimes. I have no idea why I can i identify with that. I know I wasn't physically or sexually abused. But the stories make me cry until their triumph at the end. Obviously they would not have written a memoir if they had not survived and done well and were now happy. Like us. Well, I know I'm usually happy...I h ope you are too!!!

I agree with the therapist's take. When you read about these other helpless little kids, and when you celebrate their escapes and their capacities to make sense of their lives and to put their stories together without hatred or the lust of vengeance, you are hearing your own story. You are holding yourself with compassion. I think maybe you cannot feel compassion for that tormented little girl who was yourself directly, yet. But you were hurt when you were a little girl, SWOT. You did not pick these places where you see yourself as the wrong one or the bad one out of the air. These things happened to you. All those years when you should have been cherished and taught, you were condemned and victimized, instead. As we heal, all of us here, that is how it will happen. We will being seeing our abusers through our own eyes.

It is a hard thing to disbelieve the things that were hurt into us in all those years, that were hurt into us in the night when we were jerked out of our child's sleep and tormented and ridiculed and condemned by mothers whose eyes were empty and there was no one, in all the world, to save us.

That is why we believed. To live. It was that bad, the trauma of the things that happened to us. Somehow, we lived. An adult who finds himself in the positions we did as little girls makes that same choice. To live. And when he comes back to his own country after the war, they call what happened to him brainwashed.

That is what happened to us, too.

That there was no bruise to show for it, or no cut or burnt place, can make it more difficult to test the validity of what we remember.

That is why our families all seem to have devised some method of causing us to distrust the validity of our own thinking, or even to cause us to believe there is some fatal, forever irrecoverable thing wrong with our brains. And that is why they name us things like borderline.

I never believed you were that name, SWOT.

I never did. I have posted that to you, before.

All the things that you do experience, the anxiety and etc...there is the proof of abuse. Right there, SWOT. That is what it cost you for them to force you to carry that burden, for you to carry the shame of who they are.

Me too. Maybe that is that heavy thing I was posting about, that so heavy thing I am bearing.

I never saw it that way.

But I did bear it, SWOT. And so did you, and so did Copa.

So that is an interesting thing, that I see it that way now.

It must be gathered up into one burden, where before, it permeated my view of reality.

For heaven's sake you guys. By the time we are done here and I finally take another shot at writing? I will be so well adjusted I won't have anything to say.

Huh.

Or it could be that I will stop self sabotaging and will publish a best selling something. If I do? I will dedicate it to SWOT and to Copa, and no one will know what that means but us.

I will do that.

That is how you will know.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

And I know this sounds weird too, but maybe? They were exactly right. We have carried what we have carried. We seem not to have passed it on. Even now, even choosing to unravel it now, is a choice for us.

A courageous one.

YES!!!

You are strong and whole. You are the winner in this, not them.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Never the expectation let alone hope that one among them would do the right thing for me.

But this will not happen between your son and yourself, Copa. However it happens between yourself and your child, it will have nothing to do with those issues. It will have to do with his addiction. There may be horrible things that will happen, terrible wounds he will inflict that will call those unhealed traumas you carry. But though it will feel the same Copa, you will need to find the strength somewhere to separate your role, and correct response to the pain your son calls for you, from what is appropriate to him, and what is being called from your past.

I sound like I know everything again. But it happened to me that as my children fell harder and further, new trauma was calling old until I could not distinguish between them. I could not help my children from that place, Copa. You are a strong, intelligent woman. I see it in your posts. You will make that distinction Copa, for the sake of your child. The hard thing about it is that we cannot see how to do that thing we need to do. You don't need to see it Copa. You only need to know it is possible.

The rest you can and will and are, doing on your own. You don't need us to do that. That we are here for one another, not just SWOT and I, but all of the people on this site, is like a shortcut for us to a place we were determined to go all along.

I am sorry for the pain of it, Copa. I have never felt with the intensity I have always felt, where anything to do with my children is concerned. But here is a secret, Copa: That is how I knew I would do it or blow everything up, trying.

That is how I knew that good thing.

I described it as a cold eyed decision to survive?

But I meant all those things about strength and determination and pain and leaning into it instead of running from it that I just posted.

You will get through, Copa. You are already on your way.

Take especial care with yourself, Copa. You have already been so horribly betrayed and mistreated, time and again. You never have to allow that, anymore, ever. Not even from yourself, to yourself.

They lie, Copa. They lied to us every day of our lives, those people we trusted to tell us true things.

Nor care for pain inflicted by their hand, expecting that my love for them would tolerate all, that I would eat my grief and anger, as my due.

I know. How clever, and how very cowardly and unethical of them.

That is how bullies do what they do. That is just exactly how they do it Copa. Then? They buy shiny new shoes, so they can dance on our graves, believing us already safely dead. You know those old spooky movies, where the hand reaches out of the grave? And grabs someone by the ankle so tight, and the person so stupidly dancing on the grave struggles so hard to get away?

That's me. The guy reaching out of the grave.

And I love it.

Oh, I wish I could put such emotion into those words. I am so mad, not that they put me there and had the temerity to dance over me in those sparkly new shoes? But that I believed them enough to lay down there in the first place when I was never dead, at all.

Not for one minute.

I was only agreeing with them that I must be what they said because they were so freaking certain.

They lie.

I don't. So I am not grabbing them to jerk them down into the grave they insisted was where I belonged with me? I am grabbing them, with all my might, to pull myself out.

What happens to them is not a concern of mine.

But I would think it would be pretty hard to make it out of a graveyard in dancing shoes.

Too bad they were so certain I was dead.

They might have worn their Nikes. And their Rolexes, so they could know the time.

I think my skin on my hand that is reaching out and grabbing right on to their ankles in a grip that will never let go is blue. Cold, very cold, and so blue.

No compassion.

No mercy.

Zip.

The theme song from Rocky thunders in the background.

And I am rocking to those rhythms, in my grave. Who was it who is supposed to have said the rumors of his death had been greatly exaggerated?

That is what I am going to say, once my head is free. That is exactly what I am going to say.

With aplomb.

If that's the word I mean.

I realized that what I want most from him is that he stand up to do the right thing, say the right thing, acknowledge what is the right thing.

Then you are going to have to tell him that's what you want, Copa. No more mixed messages about whether you deserve anything less because that is what your family told you. We have already established that they lie. They routinely do things like return down comforters with menstrual blood on them when everyone knows that is inappropriate. Lord knows what they do, to us and to everyone else, in the privacy of their own minds.

So, disregard them right now Copa, understanding that is where you are going, understanding that is where you are taking this thing you have taken on with such courage.

Tell your son: I expect you to stand up. I expect you to beat this thing. I expect you to be the man I raised you to be. You are bright. You are strong. I love you. I love you passionately and I will never stop. If you continue to destroy yourself for a thousand lifetimes, I will love you still with a mother's passionate intensity forever. I am Isis, holding strong for my child, for my son.
I love you too much to watch you self destruct and I love you too much to help you do it.

Isis is said to have been searching for that last part of her son to this day. I have posted before that the missing piece is, or are, the organs of regeneration. And that is a true thing. Your son needs his manhood to defeat his addiction and his illness and to challenge and define the course of his life.

You are his mother.

And that is a very fine thing to be.

Stop allowing your family of origin to sully that beautiful thing that you are.

Reach into the future for it, if the strength is not there, today.

That's what I had to do. That is how I found the legend of Isis.

On the internet.

F you, mom. Well, and sister too, as it turns out. Those poisonous dancers on shallow graves where they put people are not even dead, yet.

Idiots.

Just for the record everyone? Those words were spoken in the French accent they use in the Monty Python piece Lil and Jabber posted for us.

Yep.

In this interval of waiting, that is what leaks out. Wanting somebody in my family to do the right thing. By me.

Never going to happen, Copa. If they were going to do one single right thing, they would have done it already and would never have hurt us in the first place.

But they did hurt us.

And they did do things like returning beautiful down comforters sullied with their menstrual blood.

That is who they are.

That they do these kinds of things tells us nothing about us.

But it does help us decide what song we are going to play in the background when we reach up and grab their ankles.

You may use Rocky's theme song too, Copa. When you are ready? Then you will choose music more appropriate to your own awakening. Until then? Hear the thunder, in mine.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

And no parent stepped in to help either of us and we both needed help.

That is so true a thing that I feel sad for myself to this minute. How everything could have all been so different.

Instead of strengthening, instead of teaching courage to see a thing and strength (which is come of believing we can do whatever the thing is) to complete it, we were set on one another with the savagery of a pack of dogs.

I feel badly for your sister for just this one minute, SWOT.

But she is an adult now, and she continues to make those same choices to hurt and to weaken, to name with false names and accuse.

So, out she goes.

Don't forget your dancing shoes, Sissy. For my party at my shallow gravesite where I say the rumors of my death have been greatly exaggerated.

I can grab onto as many dancing ankles as I want. Turns out I am strong, like that. Once I decide to do it, I can do pretty much anything at all.

Well, I can in my imagination.

:O)

I was jealous of my sister when I was a girl because s he seemed to be the only family member who was normal and had friends.

I could be jealous of my sister in this way. It is a very true thing that I do not think like everyone else. And while I could make and keep friends pretty easily, I could not do the things they did and found meaning in very well, or for very long. I would go back to my books, or to thinking about how things worked. There was a time I decided to put popularity back together. And one of the things young girls my age did was thunder through the gym at lunch hour. The thrill in this being that it was not allowed. No one was allowed in the gym at lunch hour. So, I repaired relationship and so on, and ran through the gym, right? And like, right in the middle of the gym? I just stopped running.

I am that way today, too.

I have posted before about the Blind Melon song with the bee girl in it. This chubby little girl, all awkward and wrong in every way in all her interactions is finally thrown out entirely, and ends up in this place where everyone is wearing bee costumes.

That is what it felt like to me when I attended classes at that Benedictine university where I finally completed the requirements for my undergraduate degree.

Home.

Like me.

Everyone there.

Like me.

It was a great feeling. I may become a thing called an oblate sister at some point in my life. I loved it there. I suppose I would have to be Catholic first, to do that.

But there it was, in that Benedictine culture and heritage and outlook.

Me.

Like me.

:O)

I am still so grateful that I was able to do that, to this very minute.

So in a sense, my mother was exactly right. I do not think like them, and I never did.

But in a good way; a great way, even.

Huh.

Cedar, our families were like they were because the people on top, our parents, did not take the time to learn how to parent or didn't want to parent. Our mothers wanted us to do whatever they wanted; be what they wanted (more in your case; the former in my case). And our sisters picked it up.

I agree. But they are adults now SWOT, making adult choices with adult brains.

That's the difference.

You sound like you were a compliant child who tried to please your mother.

I think that at some level I hated my mother very, very much. I did not respect her. I was not even afraid of her after the age of twelve or maybe even eleven.

At all.

She did not like the arrogance in me. She was yelling all over one Saturday, which is what she usually did. I put on a pair of red patent leather shoes I had bought while shopping with my grandmother who loved flashy things like that and wore red all the time.

And my mother hated those shoes.

And there is a whole line of folk belief that likens wearing red shoes to the power accruing to the menstruating female. But I did not know that, then. I just knew I had to put those shoes on because there was my mother, screaming away again. So I did put them on. And the next screaming my mother did was about who the hell that Cedar thinks she is anyway, wearing those red shoes and making all that noise with her footsteps.

You know? I don't remember whatever happened to those shoes. Probably my mother took after me then and destroyed them. I don't know.

I don't think that is what happened. I think what happened is that she made my brother, who was beefier than me but I don't think taller than me yet, go out into the yard and fight. And I can remember being what I know know to call conflicted now, but I didn't have that term then. And I was scared in that hyper-alert way because my brother ~ I don't know. But it seems like his heart wasn't really into fighting with me either, because I can remember my mother forcing us to fight and not letting us stop.

I can still see and hear her.

It was a sunny day.

***

If there is trauma there (and there must be, because who I think I am is a pretty common theme in my self sagotaging to this day, and in my feeling that I can do what I want to, like write something readable, or valuable, or not pretentious). Yes. there is trauma, there. And it has to do with children too big to abuse and so, you make them fight with and hate and abuse one another.

Like gladiators in a Roman arena.

Just like that.

I see you.

I see you too, mom.

I see you back.

It was a sunny day.

And I was a girl who had begun menstruating. And that is an age when fighting with brothers is not what we do.

Huh.

Man, it just keeps getting worse, the things that would happen to all of us. I wonder whether my brother ever thinks about that day. Probably not. I never do.

Until now.

Until now, and I am very sad for all of us that this happened. The miracle of any of this is that we could even try to have dinner together. My brother has been a good brother to me. I did tell him, in that time when everyone chose sides and I said I was not going to help him with my mother during the summers, that he would always have access to me. And that sounds so goofy, I know that. But I am glad I said it. And I meant it and I still do, whether I ever see him again, or not.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I had a sister, Cedar.

I am so happy for you that this was so, SWOT.

I am getting ready to watch some basketball tonight with D H.

I love knowing this.

D H and I watched the Triple Crown being taken by American Pharoah together. And the phone rang and it was the Kentucky neighbor who actually has spent four or five Christmases with the lady owner of Secretariat, the last Triple Crown winner. So that was exciting and so much fun, and I asked the neighbor whether Secretariat's owner had been married or divorced or never married or what, because it is an unusual thing for a woman to have owned and trained a Triple Crown winner. And she said, and I quote: "No, honey. She divorced the son of a ."

And this neighbor?

Is 88 years old.

:O)

You have peeps who understand you, even if it is only Copa and me. But we are here. You know that.

I do, and am deeply appreciative to the point I could cry about it, sometimes.

It would not be possible to do this, to rework all we were taught, without one another.

I feel like, triumphantly defiant about that, and about us, and about what it turns out we are able to do, here.

F them all, with impunity. Those dirty, dirty rats. James Cagney said that, I think. I never realized he was talking about my mom.

Good job, James Cagney.

Tomorrow is her birthday, Cedar. Nineteen. My baby. And my anniversary is a few days later. Twenty years.

I love knowing this, too.

Nineteen, huh? That's amazing. I love Jumper already from the other posts. I wish her well and happy and strong with all my heart, SWOT.

You are such a great mom.

And twenty years married. D H and I have an anniversary coming up this month, too. How lovely for us all that we have our men that we do in our lives. Copa, M has been there in your life too for such a long time.

We are fortunate in those ways.

D H is more fortunate than me, of course.

Though he always does try to get me to agree I am the more fortunate one.

He is so vain.

He not only LOVES me, he LIKES me! He thinks I'm a good person. He always says positive things to me about myself. When I am down, he is there. He is such a stable, grounded man, Cedar. He has taught me that peace is possible and lack of drama and conflict is possible and desirable.

D H and I are like fire and air. He is a Leo. I am an Aquarian. It works for us, though. We never did leave one another. Even when he hated being anywhere near either my mother or my sister, he would do it, for me. Isn't that something, now that I am seeing what he sees.

Whatever. I am not cutting him any slack. D H likes a little fight in me. D H is who taught me to stand up in the first place, as it turned out, over the years. Now? He's like, "Well you don't have any trouble standing up to me. How is it you can't stand up to your mother?!?"

Well, probably because she believed me into that shallow grave I have been enjoying posting about reaching out of to the Rocky tune this morning.

The two kids we raised together got the benefit of seeing a very good marriage and both of them have expressed that they had wonderful childhoods

Well, D H and I have been all over the place with everything. Bad times and good times and horrible times that were so awful and so hard. Daughter is so nice about her childhood, so admiring even. Son is like, "I hate you. You are a jerk and etc." But since he is not addicted anymore, he is not in that same place. I will not say he would ever say he had a great childhood. But I will say that moms who are the cub scout leader for your den probably means you had an okay enough childhood.

I will say that to myself, in case he never comes around.

My detaching is going well and I am feeling good.

:O)

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

I don't think that is what happened. I think what happened is that she made my brother, who was beefier than me but I don't think taller than me yet, go out into the yard and fight. And I can remember being what I know know to call conflicted now, but I didn't have that term then. And I was scared in that hyper-alert way because my brother ~ I don't know. But it seems like his heart wasn't really into fighting with me either, because I can remember my mother forcing us to fight and not letting us stop.

Sick and sadistic.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I have karate today guys, and I have to do housework and etc.

Thank you both. I don't have words to express what this means. But I do know you know what I mean, because I am here for you in that way, too.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

If there is trauma there (and there must be, because who I think I am is a pretty common theme in my self sagotaging to this day, and in my feeling that I can do what I want to, like write something readable, or valuable, or not pretentious). Yes. there is trauma, there. And it has to do with children too big to abuse and so, you make them fight with and hate and abuse one another.

Sick, sick, sick.

E. did this in a different way.

Well...and maybe one day you'll see this too...it turned out for the best.

Would you have found it better if your FOO had not been there to influence your kids?

As for thinking differently than them, we do. But we don't think differently than EVERYBODY.

Aren't you glad you're not like them? You're so much nicer!

I don't know if I'm nicer than they are. We all know how to stick it to one another and we have. But I do feel, in a humble way, that I have given more to people to make their lives better than the rest of my FOO. And I value this about me.

See? I can actually see the value of myself when they are not anywhere in my world.

I really try hard to help people and animals too. I really like this giving quality I have that even my first husband, who used to criticize me a lot, could see and talked about. But FOO could not see.

"You adopted those kids for the money."
Good old E.

Yes, we paid for the adoption, E.

This was before we adopted Snoic, the only one who had a subsidy and we didn't adopt him for that reason.

These things that E. had said to me is why a multitude of therapists have told me she was abusive. This type of talk is simply an attempt to make something good and loving intot something opportunistic because, of course, I am selfish.

Such a nice lady, eh?

Therapists from way back saw the trauma. Before I believed them or WOULD believe them, they saw it.

"My mother was a GOOD mother. I was just such a bad child that she had to act that way." (Me at my first therapy appointments).

The odd looks I was given by therapists.

"I'm not going to send you to a psychiatrist. Mrs. R. sent D. to one and the psychiatrist blamed HER for her daughter's problems. I'm not sending you there just so you can hear how I caused your problems."

So she didn't send me.

But she did have a big hand in my problems.

And not sending me at thirteen, when I was suffering so badly with my first and possibly worst clinical depression, didn't stop me from learning the truth. Even if I tried not to accept it at first.

Hang in there. Tomorrow is another day

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

But there it was, in that Benedictine culture and heritage and outlook.

...sheltering against the bloodied breast of the wounded white dove

Well, that must have been that Benedictine school I attended to learn whether I was stupid in some why I could not see, or evil in the way that first therapist had described.

Good for me, then.

That therapist may just be dancing on that shallow grave I am posting about this morning, too. I believe I will dress him in sparkly high heels, as well.

But he is still a pretty scary figure. So maybe we will make him sit on a tombstone somewhere and wait his turn.

Here's the thing. He was so helpful to me, at first. I still do feel such gratitude for those beginning sessions. And I will admit that he seemed pretty surprised when I began bringing in things about my mother and etc.

So we will allow him to remain seated in a place of honor, but not really in danger of losing his head. This therapist? Is Jesse, in that poem I posted for all of us.

Cedar



Cedar