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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 659667" data-attributes="member: 17461">I love this.:O)Choose love, Copa.Every time.  Refuse to accept anything less.It happens to me that old trauma and fresh trauma and formerly unrecognized trauma overwhelm my psyche when my child or my children are endangered.  Where another mother has strength and stability regarding what to do when trouble comes, I have old trauma, new trauma, fresh trauma, formerly unrecognized trauma.Could that be happening to you too, Copa?  Old trauma is the most intense in my experience.  So much happened before we had words, and was put away without them.  The feelings as they rise are intense.  We cannot name them except in symbols.Even when we name them, they are still scary as hell.  These were times we confronted pure evil.  Times we confronted adults in the grip of some horrible something we could not understand.We truly are warriors; at rest now, reviewing the troops now instead of in the thick of the battle, but warriors, bona fide heros, fresh from the heat of battle, nonetheless.You knew, even then, that you were in danger, Copa.  Despite everything we each were taught about how sisters love one another, our sisters hate us.  I do think this hatred is intense and all encompassing enough to be described as pathologic.  It is not going to go away.  It had its genesis in our woundings, in the roles we took to cope with our woundings, and in the woundings of our sisters.The way I am seeing it this morning, our abusers ~ or the evil they could not hold ~ won this round.  They have successfully separated us from our sibs.  Separated each of us, all of us, sibs included, from the warmth and safety and identity to be found in togetherness, in family.  We are isolated. They are, too.  That is simply a fact we must acknowledge.  I am finding that I always knew it too, Copa.  I did not let what I knew deter me from choosing to make that family dinner, and to see my family as happily seated around me, the glow from the candles reflected in their faces and in the glasses of crystal, the linen so beautifully white.We all were so hurt, Copa.Forgive yourself.That is our ultimate task here I think.  To forgive and come to cherish, ourselves.We cannot change what happened to our sisters.  Neither can we allow them to continue hating and disparaging us or to hurt our children.  Our children are in big trouble.  We need to figure out how to help them be strong enough to come out on top of it and reclaim themselves.  Our sisters have not confronted us, before.  We are the oldest; we do protect and regret and hope and allow for their sakes.  But it is time to name them, and to name ourselves.Then we must go on, healed in those ways and not vulnerable there, anynore.We need you up, Copa.It matters.You matter.Your son matters.M matters.These woundings, these terrible things that happened to each of us, these are just things we need to face so we can be stronger than we have been.We all are doing well.***I host my Book Club tonight and have baking and cleaning and preparing to do.  Each lady is so special, and it is a real joy to anticipate the evening.  One of us will be missing; she will be back, next month.I will be back with you, tomorrow. :O)Cedar</blockquote>

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