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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 659752" data-attributes="member: 17461">Ha!  I do (and smell pretty good too) until:  The cat poops in her carrier twenty minutes into the trip and I clean that out in the rain at the next rest stop while D H walks the dog in the rain with no umbrella.  Until we:  Pull over into another rest stop late that night to grab a few hours sleep, crack the windows because of the aforementioned dog (now wet) and the cat.   The time that happened?  We were so tired and slept so soundly for those few hours that we were a good hour down the road before we realized it must have rained right on us through those cracked open windows while we were sleeping.And we both were soaking wet.Even when we don't get rained on?  By the time we finally get home, we look just terrible.Once or twice, in addition to the dog and the cat, we brought our goldfish in a huge pickle jar.We brought a straw so we could blow oxygen into his water if he needed emergency resuscitation. He did fine.That is why I wear the black dress.  Doesn't show the dirt.  Take the leggings off when we get to warmer weather, or put them on, with black socks and a hoodie, if we are heading North.We got this all planned out.CedarThere is a certain restaurant where we have breakfast every year when we come North.  You can imagine how we look and smell by that time.  We will have been on the road something like 24 hours with 8 hours to go.  The restaurant is in Northern farm country.  The farmers pull their hats down and peek out the sides of their morning papers at us like they've never seen two rained-on people who smell like wet dog eat eggs, before.For heaven's sake.:O)As I have confronted and cleared so many things over the past few weeks, I found myself dreaming of, and finding unexpected imagery of, and almost seeming to feel myself carrying, a burden.  In the past week, that sense of burden seems to have gone steady state, but the week before that ~ maybe even two weeks before ~ that sense and imagery of burden, of whether it might be a cross or a burlap sack or just what it might look and feel like, was very strong.I am still carrying whatever it is.  Suffering of some kind, some heavy something that is not me, not mine, and yet it is.But the toxicity in the hearts of our families was (or is) the engine driving contempt and abuse.We absorbed that, too.To go back to SWOT's article on rigidity and flexibility as the barometers for healthy or for dysfunctional families:  Rigidity is a symptom of dysfunction.  It was this rigidity of outlook, this certainty that grace would not be extended, that mercy would never be given, that ended in rage and frustrated striking out at what was visible of the hated self.  A generational system.  It was as though, and it feels as though, I am working with, am taking apart the chemical bonds of, the accepted emotional states prevalent in my family of origin.These are deep-rooted feeling states having to do with family identity, having to do with the feeling states and with the stories passed down.   Some heavy, burdensome thing.  As I have done with the other feelings and with the other imagery as it came up, I am simply staying present.I expect to come through it very changed.I wonder whether this is something similar to what you are freeing, Copa?Cedar</blockquote>

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