High chair tyrants

[Childofmine]

The benefit of the pain. I know we all experience excruciating pain that goes on and on with this life with our precious difficult children. We ask why and we are so angry that we have to keep suffering. That they have to keep suffering. This reading below gives some purpose to the pain. I have experienced this myself. It's the "refining fire." I am not trying to push a Christian perspective here---so if that is not your perspective---read on and take what you like and leave the rest. The message is still relevant. I see this in others on this site who have pushed through the pain, and have come out on the other side. We have to keep doing it over and over again, and in this process, I believe we are moved to a higher state, a better state, of being. I am grateful for what I have experienced so far, in this process, of becoming a better person, even though I would not wish it on anyone, especially my precious son, who I believe is also going through the same fire.



Holding the Pain
Tuesday, April 8, 2014

Don’t get rid of the pain until you’ve learned its lessons. When you hold the pain consciously and trust fully, you are in a very special liminal space. This is a great teaching moment where you have the possibility of breaking through to a deeper level of faith and consciousness. Hold the pain of being human until God transforms you through it. And then you will be an instrument of transformation for others.

As an example of holding the pain, picture Mary standing at the foot of the cross. Standing would not be the normal posture of a Jewish woman who is supposed to wail and lament and show pain externally. She’s holding the pain instead, as also symbolized in Michelangelo’s Pietà. Mary is in complete solidarity with the mystery of life and death. She’s trying to say, “There’s something deeper happening here. How can I absorb it just as Jesus is absorbing it, instead of returning it in kind?” Until you find a way to be a transformer, you will pass the pain onto others.

Jesus on the cross and Mary standing by the cross are images of transformative religion. They are never transmitting the pain to others. All the hostility that had been directed toward them—the hatred, the accusations, the malice—none of it is returned. They hold the suffering until it becomes resurrection! That’s the core mystery. It takes our whole life to comprehend this, and then to become God’s “new creation” (Galatians 6:15). The imperial ego hates such seeming diminishment.

Unfortunately, we have the natural instinct to fix pain, to control it, or even, foolishly, to try to understand it. The ego always insists on understanding. That’s why Jesus praises a certain quality even more than love, and he calls it faith. It is the ability to stand in liminal space, to stand on the threshold, to hold the contraries, until you move to a deeper level where it all eventually makes sense in the great scheme of God and grace.


Adapted from The Authority of Those Who Have Suffered (MP3 download)

Gateway to Silence:
God is in this with us.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Many of the saints and mystics, like Francis of Assisi, just dive into facing
the unfamiliar, the foreign, and the scary ahead of time. Francis called it
“poverty,” which might not be the way we use the word today. For him
it meant facing the “poor” side of everything and finding your riches there.What an amazing turnaround! Henceforth, failure is almost impossible.

difficult child daughter describes everything that has happened to her ~ including the beating, including that she may not have come awake again at all and would never have known the difference ~ like this, COM.

difficult child daughter says she is no longer afraid of death.

She has no lust of vengeance toward the male. She never did.

The third split is when you split your mind from your body and soul and
make your mind the engineer, the control tower. You make your mind
“you.”

I have been reading Eckhardt Tolle again, COM. At bottom, every spiritual tradition seems to be telling us, seems to be describing us to ourselves, in identical ways. How could we have not seen this? But you know what?

I did not see it either, the first time I read through your postings on this thread.

So the change is in me.

Not the writings.

“You are to love the Lord your God with your whole mind, your whole soul, your whole body, and your whole strength, and to love your neighbor as
yourself”

We are not being asked or taught to love ourselves here, except as we have learned to love through loving outside ourselves.

And loving is amazingly possible from that perspective, inside of that position. It never had anything to do with judgment or worship, with power, other than as this infinity of free-flowing energy.

Real, on every level.

Great love and great suffering are actually the quickest ways, but they
normally cannot be sustained at the unitive level.) Contemplation is the
mental discipline that detaches you, even neurologically, from your
addiction to your way of thinking in general, and your left brain in
particular. You stop believing your little mind is the whole show, you stop
trusting it as fully adequate, and you start venturing out into much broaderways of knowing, which frankly are much more compassionate because
they are not dualistic.

I must not be here, yet. I get that there is something here. I don't have it, yet. But I see how to get there.

Let go.

Show up, and let go.

Often the first blow to the fixed identity is precipitated by a crisis, when
things fall apart in your life. But actually it's your fixed identity that's
crumbling. The purpose of the spiritual path is to unmask,to take off our
armor.

True. Exactly true.

The fourth split is when you split your acceptable self from your
unacceptable self. You build a persona, a self-image that is based upon
what most people want from you, reward you for, and what you choose to
identify with. At the same time, you repress and often totally deny your
“shadow self.” Your shadow is what you refuse to see about yourself and
what you do not want others to see

True.

And even worse, this unworthy instrument becomes that by which you see others (which is why you tend to dislike people who are just like you!)

I would say that the major reason why so much religion is a waste of time is that it is mostly about external actions, rituals, and behaviors, whereas
Jesus focuses very strongly on the internal (attitude, motivation, intention) and actually minimizes the external. Only an inner life of prayer helps you to go where Jesus invites us.

And there comes a time in spiritual traditions, in poetry, in every art form, described as "praying continually."

That is where we are going.

That is Rumi's field.

Both the idealized self and the shadow self can blind one to their best and deepest self. This, ironically, is a “field of both weeds and wheat” (Matthew 13:24f) that for some magnificent reasons God not only fully accepts but even loves. It is only we who refuse to live in this field. Rumi, the Sufi poet,beautifully says, “I will meet you there!”

I did not understand this poem. So strange, that we think we understand and then boom everything changes.

Again.

(the eternal focus on others, not myself, much more comfortable)

Yes. Even when we think we are thinking "What are they thinking about me." we are switching our focus from ourselves, from our discomfort with the shadow side.

And as I continue to do this hard work on my shadow self, I see those
defects more clearly. I am willing to be more honest and tell the truth
about myself. I am willing to work to change myself. I am willing to forgive myself.

This is a very good prayer, COM. A setting of intention.

My difficult child MUST answer the question of his own significance

True.

What in the world
took me so long? I was putting others' significance way ahead of my own. I was not as significant as they were. Today, I am as significant as they are, and that is a blessing

I like this. I am not there, yet. Nowhere near. Part of being present, of riding that edge Brene Brown describes, is work on this level.

Letting go of safety is the next level, I think. Letting go of cowardice, of backing away from that trapeze Echo posted about this morning.

It doesn't matter if I can't do it. Doesn't matter how it turns out.

Letting go of the outcome.

Again, spiritual belief systems coalesce, and are teaching the same true things.

If you try to skip the first journey, you will never see its real necessity and also its limitations; you will never know why this first container must fail
you, the wonderful fullness of the second half of the journey, and the
relationship between the two.

So is it possible the grief we feel has as much to do with stubbornly refusing to let go of that first container as it does with what is happening to the children we have not been able to let go into their adulthoods?

Jesus’ constant emphasis is on interior religiosity, on purifying motivation
and intention.

Jesus tells us to give alms, and fast, and pray secretly

The purifying of our intention and motivation is the basic way that we
unite our inner and our outer worlds.

All through the spiritual journey, we should be asking ourselves, “Why am I doing this

The spiritual journey could be seen as a constant purification of motive until I can finally say, “I have no other reason to do anything except love of God and love of
neighbor. And I don’t even need people to know this.” When I can say this I have total and full freedom. I can no longer be bought off! Finally I realize that my life is not about me. It’s about Love.

Levels of understanding for me on this one, COM.

It's like falling through a kaliediscope.

To me, this is in line with the thinking about being stronger in the broken
places. The light shines through the cracks in each of us.

I believe he is weeping with us. He is holding us as we despair. He is right
here. And he is with our difficult children. He is standing beside them, walking down the street with them, in the abandoned house with them as they sleep. He is
weeping with them as they struggle to survive.

It is clearly disestablishment literature, yet has largely been used by
establishments, which is at the heart of our interpretative problem.

Jesus calls this Ultimate Source the “living water” at the bottom of the
well (John 4:10-14).

This resonates with me.

You cannot know how I appreciate these posts, COM. Or maybe, you do. We do acknowledge the depth and mystery of what happens, here on the site.

Thank you so much.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

When you hold the pain consciously and trust fully, you are in a very special liminal space.

esus on the cross and Mary standing by the cross are images of transformative religion. They are never transmitting the pain to others. All the hostility that had been directed toward them—the hatred, the accusations, the malice—none of it is returned. They hold the suffering until it becomes resurrection! That’s the core mystery

The imperial ego hates such seeming diminishment.

The ego always insists on understanding. That’s why Jesus praises a certain quality even more than love, and he calls it faith. It is the ability to stand in liminal space, to stand on the threshold, to hold the contraries, until you move to a deeper level where it all eventually makes sense in the great scheme of God and grace

I may just have posted this to you, COM. I posted it to one of us, this morning....

"Faith is not, contrary to the usual ideas, something that turns out right or wrong, like a gambler's bet. It is an act, an intention, a project; something that makes you, in leaping into the future, go so far, far ahead that you shoot clean out of Time and right into Eternity, which is not the end of Time or unending Time, but timelessness, that old, Eternal Now."

Russ
On Strike Against God

 

[bluebell]

I am struggling with so much of this, maybe because I am just a few years into this. I was just called home from work by my daughter - difficult child and his dad were fighting. I drive home, with 'victim' mentalilty running thru my head. 'What will difficult child destroy that I have to pay for?' 'Who is going to get arrested?' husband seems to have been able to walk away from this one and it is calm at home right now. I feel like so much of my 'spiritual journey' has been sidelined by what others throw in my path. I am in constant 'reaction' mode and husband accuses me of 'over-reacting'. But it may be that I will see this more clearly as the distance between this need for me to be the 'umpire' and 'savior' to everyone's failings. When will I be able to focus on ME?

My difficult child still (yes it's something 8 year olds say) says that he didn't ask to be born. Maybe it's my ego getting in the way but I've always responded with 'Well neither did I, what's that have to do with anything?' But I don't remember ever feeling that way towards my parents. I remember feeling extremely lucky that I lived in the United States and not starving in Africa, and believe me I was not privileged and my parents were flawed and fallible. That child is still in the 'garden' and the weeds are getting high...

Just rambling I suppose, but I feel better now.

 

[Childofmine]

Reading these posts on this thread again, I think: What am I so afraid of with difficult child? Why am I so afraid of his possible death? As if death is the very worst thing. I do know it is the most final thing. But I am not sure it is the very worst thing.

I am also afraid for his life. This life, this life of no one, nothing, shuffling down the street, hunched against the cold, figuring out the next meal. It is Maslow's Hierarchy of needs---the most basic of needs: Survival. And at the top is Self-Actualization. I remember the class in college when they taught us that---I was mesmerized by this notion that there is a hierarchy to our becoming. Many of our difficult children at at the bottom of the pyramid and many of us are at the top. We are light-years apart in how we approach life. Maslow says that you have to build your own pyramid layer by layer--- that the next layer cannot be laid until the first layer is laid, then next, then next. And I read recently in When the Servant Becomes the Master that the brain of a drug addict is so focused on the drugs themselves they will forgo other basic needs like food or sleep because the pull of the drug is as basic as breathing.If drugs are holding hostage the first layer, there is no opportunity to build the other layers, and that is what I believe the professionals mean when they say the practicing drug addict and alcoholic arrested in their development. If their addictive use began at age 12, and today they are 22, their actual performance level (if you will) is age 12. That is why they act like people who are 12 in a body of a 22 year old.

And the place in the brain that craves the drugs is why they just can't stop. Just stop, we want to scream at them. They can't. Not without so much help and then tools, every day, so that they are not giving in to the pull.

Does he miss the upper layers? Or does he even know they are there?

 

[recoveringenabler]

It is the ability to stand in liminal space, to stand on the threshold, to hold the contraries, until you move to a deeper level where it all eventually makes sense in the great scheme of God and grace.

I feel as if I have been standing in that liminal space, feeling not all that "comfortable" with uncertainty or lack of control. Quite a few areas of my life have had the winds of change blow through recently. Perhaps some might qualify as a tsunami. I've been practicing staying centered in the middle of the storm, taking no action, allowing, letting go........it's been quite the lesson. As is usually the case in suffering, I had to look at my attachments. What am I attached to? What makes me feel hurt or angry? What scares me?

Fortunately I have a good support system, I can cry easily, I can rant if I want, so free expression was right there for me to let it rip so to speak. And, I was practicing all of those Pema Chodron guidelines I had been sharing with all of you. One thing to talk about it, another to live it! Sitting in all of that uncertainty and chaos, allowing the pain without running for what makes it go away, is.......... painful. I kept thinking about Pema saying that we want pleasure but we run from pain. So, I hung out in the pain. I took no action. I waited. I was silent in the places where the changes were taking place. (not so easy for a communicative controller)

Well, things evolved. At my job, there was a complete turnaround. Where I thought I would be creating my exit strategy, what actually happened is a whole new team was created out of the chaos, of which I am an important member. New roads have opened in other areas where I thought there were dead ends.

What happened on the inside of me, was I detached. I let go.

I had dinner with my girlfriend the other night and we were talking about detachment, it's a major theme in both of our lives. Not exactly detachment as we talk about it here in relation to our kids, although it is the same...... the Buddhist concept of suffering being caused by our attachments. We've been friends for many years and have watched each other go through lots of life transitions. We laughed about how when you are attached to ANYTHING, that is where you are, you can't be anywhere but attached, you can't fake detachment, you either feel it and let go or you don't. And all the while we are attached, it hurts like the dickens.

Once we can stand on that" threshold", I think if we are strong enough to do that, when we slip into the "deeper level", I think what happens is we detach, we let go................ and then we find that grace. It is a beautiful thing. Detachment beats attachment, hands down (in my humble opinion).

Acceptance of facts is on the Hierarchy of needs.........acceptance is what happens when I feel detached. When I let go, I feel acceptance. It's not as if that is a permanent state, it's fluid and it goes back and forth and up and down........but we can learn to go through what we go through and get to the other side a whole lot faster and easier. We learn to avoid the pot holes. I had a few major changes take place in the last couple of weeks..........thankfully I am getting better at this detachment stuff, so I hung out in the pain for a much shorter time then I would have a couple of years ago. I'm feeling so grateful for that. We CAN change.

timelessness, that old, Eternal Now."

Staying right here in the now. I can forget that sometimes. It sure helps to get reminded of that.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Why am I so afraid of his possible death?

When I believed I was losing difficult child daughter, it was not her death I was afraid of. That seemed unavoidable, seemed a thing already accomplished. It was just a question of when. What I regretted, what I felt most horrified with myself about, is that I had not laughed clearly with her, had not listened to her voice for itself ~ for the wonder of hearing my child's living voice without judging, without hidden anger and resentment, without wondering what it was going to cost this time or whether she was lying to me.

That is what I was so sorry about.

And I was the one whose emotions those all were.

I was so happy, once I thought it was over, just to have known her.

She is remarkable.

I almost missed that.

Cedar

I have gallery today. Write more later. This is an extraordinary thread, Child.

Bluebell? Welcome.

:O)

 

[Childofmine]

Oh my. This is so on point. I love this "there are no dead ends. Everything can be transmuted and everything can be used." Amazing words and it brings us closer to the answer to that age-old question: Why does God allow bad things to happen? What a journey this life is. He could have just made us all automatons. He could have! But he didn't.

And this: "You realize that God uses the bad for good..."

We are there: "Sooner or later, life is going to lead you (as it did Jesus) into the belly of the beast, into a place where you can’t fix it, you can’t control it, and you can’t explain it or understand it. That’s where transformation most easily happens. That’s when you’re uniquely in the hands of God." We can call it whatever we want to---Higher Power, God, A doorknob (that is what they say in AA to unbelievers...just believe in SOMETHING outside yourself), Mother Nature, the Universe. I don't care, really, what you/we/others call this Power Greater Than Ourselves.

"Suffering is the only thing strong enough to destabilize the imperial ego." THIS IS SO TRUE, for me and for my difficult child and for everybody else. When I am completely, completely broken, THEN and only then can I give it all up.

"It has to be led to the edge of its own resources, so it learns to call upon the Deeper Resource of who it truly is, which is the God Self, the True Self, the Christ Self, the Buddha Self—use the words you want."

Oh my. This is amazing for me today. This is no coincidence, for me. This is what I call a Holy Coincidence. I just had to share this with you.

Just sit with this for a while. Sit with it and see what speaks to you.


Suffering Can Bring Us to God
Wednesday, April 9, 2014

The genius of Jesus’ ministry is that he reveals that God uses tragedy, suffering, pain, betrayal, and death itself, not to wound you, but in fact to bring you to God. So there are no dead ends. Everything can be transmuted and everything can be used.

After all, on the cross, God took the worst thing, the killing of God, and made it into the best thing—the redemption of the world! If you gaze upon the mystery of the cross long enough, your dualistic mind breaks down, and you become slow to call things totally good or totally bad. You realize that God uses the bad for good, and that many people who call themselves good may in fact not be so good. At the cross you learn humility, patience, compassion, and all of the Christian virtues that really matter.

Jesus says, “There’s only one sign I’m going to give you: the sign of the prophet Jonah” (Luke 11:29, Matthew 12:39, 16:4). Sooner or later, life is going to lead you (as it did Jesus) into the belly of the beast, into a place where you can’t fix it, you can’t control it, and you can’t explain it or understand it. That’s where transformation most easily happens. That’s when you’re uniquely in the hands of God.

Suffering is the only thing strong enough to destabilize the imperial ego. It has to be led to the edge of its own resources, so it learns to call upon the Deeper Resource of who it truly is, which is the God Self, the True Self, the Christ Self, the Buddha Self—use the words you want. It is who we are in God and who God is in us. At this place you are indestructible!

 

[Childofmine]

What I regretted, what I felt most horrified with myself about, is that I had not laughed clearly with her, had not listened to her voice for itself ~ for the wonder of hearing my child's living voice without judging, without hidden anger and resentment, without wondering what it was going to cost this time or whether she was lying to me.

Oh Cedar, I am definitely not to that point yet where you are. I can see you way way way ahead of me on this in the misty distance.

This most recent thing set me back but today I am feeling better. I am feeling more firm on the ground. I slept all night. I am happy again.

Complete Acceptance. I am not there. I still want him to CHANGE. I am still waiting for it, with every breath I take, even though I have detached. I have detached PHYSICALLY. Obviously, I am still expecting something from him, that he so clearly cannot do.

Ugh.

More work to do, here!

 

[Echolette]

I am also afraid for his life. This life, this life of no one, nothing, shuffling down the street, hunched against the cold, figuring out the next meal.

Therein lies the heartbreak. I felt my heart hurt when I read it. I don't know how to detach from that...I'm not even sure I should detach from another person's suffering that way? Maybe just be with it.

difficult child called me yestarday...blazing headache, sore throat, fever. I thought...strep throat...and the consequences of untreated strep, even in this day, include valvular heart disease and kidney disease, maybe the more so in a drug user...so I encouraged him to get his throat swabbed and yes indeed...strep.

And then he started crying on the phone...couldn't get his coworker to do his shift for him, afraid he would get fired if he missed it, heard that some one was trash talking him at work and now he doesn't want to go in anyway, he used to love that job but now he feels stabbed in the back, no real friends, lost his SSI by missing some mailings...he was full of grief and insecurity. I"m not sure why he isn't ALWAYS full of grief and insecurity, that seems to me that that is what Maslach bottom layer is...but he isn't.

There isn't any more to that story. I let him cry, told him he might feel better tomorrow (when he has to work), that actions are louder than words and he can undo any trash talking by performing well if he wants, and that I saw another ad for the same type of work (bicycle food delivery) a few blocks away...and that is all. Cause he is stuck there at level one, with no intent or desire to move that (except when he is sick). and I am stuck as his mom, heartache for his shuffling self.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Complete Acceptance. I am not there. I still want him to CHANGE. I am stillwaiting for it, with every breath I take, even though I have detached. I
have detached PHYSICALLY. Obviously, I am still expecting something from him, that he so clearly cannot do.

It was my good fortune to have almost lost my child twice that I knew it was a probable outcome and something like three other times when I knew about what had happened afterword. The first was when the bad man slammed her van into the rocks in an attempt to kill them both. We were contacted by Intensive Care. difficult child daughter was in Neuro Intensive because her head injuries were worse than the lacerated liver she also sustained.

It was one of those times when there is nothing. No solid ground.

There was still so much shame and anger, Child.

Confusion, shame, anger, hurt. Rage, oh, so much rage, at what she had done, and at what she had done to her own children. Guilt. I pretty much devoured myself alive over what I should have known, over what I should have done.

I still hate myself a little bit, for that.

And for the things I should have done the next time it was my turn at bat.

Then, she was beat. Over time. Until the male thought she was dead. Left for dead over the course of many hours, naked, in an unheated room. Why he did not kill her when he realized she was not dead...I don't know. Maybe he was coming down from some drug? Probably.

Anyway...even that time didn't touch that deep sense of betrayal and anger at the core of me. I don't know if it had been there so long that I wasn't aware of it, or...I knew I was angry, knew I wanted better for her.

I don't know.

Maybe because this last time, with the organ failure thing, I had time to anticipate her passing...all that rage I did not know I was carrying seemed so stupid. It just seemed like the biggest, most pointless waste.

And it melted away.

And I could hear my daughter's voice when I talked with her. I could laugh with her, again.

Nothing was that serious, when I thought I was losing her.

There weren't even any regrets.

Isn't that the strangest thing.

So it isn't a thing we approach and arrive at. It just happens, one day. It's like everyone is always saying.

We seem to wake up to what is real.

My daughter has made other bad decisions (according to my way of looking) since. But there are so many ways to see.

uffering is the only thing strong enough to destabilize the imperial ego. It has to be led to the edge of its own resources, so it learns to call upon the Deeper Resource of who it truly is, which is the God Self, the True Self, the Christ Self, the Buddha Self—use the words you want. It is who we are in God and who God is in us. At this place you are indestructible!

It does have everything to do with ego. Ego is not a badness. Ego is the way we survived to this point. It isn't like we're parading around pretending we know what to do, pretending we're bigger than everything. We are trying so desperately to make sense of the wrongness and the hurts that we form a new paradigm around the out of control badness that is hurting or killing or destroying our children. I don't know that it is that we are looking to control anything. In this physical world, we do have to eat. Our children do have to care for their children ~ or we have to. Someone has to be responsible. Those things are still true. What happens to us I think is that somewhere along the line, we lose track of the joy we once took in our kids.

That is what happened to me, I think.

I remembered the boundless joy of meeting and getting to know my kids.
Who could know something this nice would happen...to me?

It was there all the time, beneath the problems and the pain.

I think life itself might be like that.

It was there all the time, beneath the problems and the pain.

But in the real, everyday world where groceries must be bought and food cooked and clothing worn and washed...it is so easy to get wrapped up in all that. I mean, that is important, too.

Sometimes, we forget to remember why we do what we do.

Cheesh, I sound kind of dorky this morning.

Okay, so sometimes, beneath the blah, blah, blah of the everyday...Cedar is kind of dorky.

Again.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

There isn't any more to that story. I let him cry, told him he might feel
better tomorrow (when he has to work), that actions are louder than wordsand he can undo any trash talking by performing well if he wants, and that I saw another ad for the same type of work (bicycle food delivery) a few
blocks away...and that is all. Cause he is stuck there at level one, with no
intent or desire to move that (except when he is sick). and I am stuck as his mom, heartache for his shuffling self.

You did good, Echo. You gave him his strength. You believed in him. What could be more powerful than a mother who believes in you.

Maybe, that is even more important than a mother who loves, cherishes, protects, until you are afraid to grow away from her.

I think that is the lesson my children are teaching me.

I am wishing this weren't so hard for us, Echo.

We have to be very strong.

Prayers going up for your son Echo, and for you.

Cedar

 

[Childofmine]

Maybe because this last time, with the organ failure thing, I had time to anticipate her passing...all that rage I did not know I was carrying seemed so stupid. It just seemed like the biggest, most pointless waste.

I see that. I haven't been at that particular place yet Cedar, but I see that. Everything extraneous falls away and you are left with basic raw truth.

But in the real, everyday world where groceries must be bought and food cooked and clothing worn and washed...it is so easy to get wrapped up in all that. I mean, that is important, too.

Yes, this is the stuff of real everyday life. The stuff our difficult children don't want to do. The stuff we do want to do because that is part of being an adult. These are the basic responsibilities of life, and then when all of this other pain and heartbreak is heaped on top of these things, and it keeps going on and on and on and on for years, we can't do it all. We are not built to do it all. And again, I think that is God's way of trying to make us see. I have read from older women (even older than me, lol!) on this forum who have tried to do it all and today they are without what they need---health, financial resources, emotional strength---to live their own lives, and I ask myself, is that what I am going to do? And the answer is no. It doesn't help. I see that clearly. It does not help anybody to do that.

Cause he is stuck there at level one, with no intent or desire to move that (except when he is sick). and I am stuck as his mom, heartache for his shuffling self.

Yes, Echo, this is the hard hard stuff. Being present with our children, like you were on the phone yesterday. Bearing witness to his pain, and then after you hung up, saying all of the things just right, like you did---not taking it on and saving him---then you have to life with that phone call and your own child's pain. And if it just happened every so often, like with PCs, then, that is normal, right? That is regular kids. But this, this is always bad news. When their name flashes up on our phone, our insides tighten. What, this time? What now?

I don't know. I hate to say it like this---it sounds cold and harsh---but I am sick to death of this merry go round. I really am.

I have been playing some conversations with my son (isn't that productive?) in my head where I say: No, I am not bailing you out because actually, I think you are right where you need to be. You don't live by society's rules and so you have to be in jail. You can't go 60 days without being homeless or in jail. Society can't and doesn't have to deal with that, and should not.

And so, if you go to prison, that is what you have chosen by your actions. That's the way it's going to be, from what I have seen from you in the past several years, until YOU decide to change. All bs and excuses and reasons aside, it's YOU who has to do something different.

Call me when you decide to.

That's where I am in my own head. Ugh. I don't even like rereading that, but it's the gospel truth.

Glad he doesn't have a phone right now because I just might be ready to say this right now.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

have been playing some conversations with my son (isn't that productive?) in my head where I say: No, I am not bailing you out because actually, I think you are right where you need to be. You don't live by society's rules and so you have to be in jail. You can't go 60 days without being homeless or in jail. Society can't and doesn't have to deal with that, and should not.
And so, if you go to prison, that is what you have chosen by your actions. That's the way it's going to be, from what I have seen from you in the past several years, until YOU decide to change. All bs and excuses and reasons aside, it's YOU who has to do something different.
Call me when you decide to.

Actually COM, that is the truth.

We just get so used to not saying what is true to our kids. Maybe we don't want to believe they are where they are. Here is the thing: they already know where they are. The conversation you want to have with your child is the right conversation, Child.

Cedar

****************************************
The rest of this is speculative material. (I was gong to say stuff, but chose the more impressive "material".) How did we get here kinds of thoughts.

Do you think that sense of anger attending those feelings is your way of beating yourself up for where he is in life?

This is the latest strange thing my daughter did. Her just-turned-fifteen year old was acting out. Understandable, right? Not to my daughter. She sent her child to live with her half brother. She sent her on a bus. Told her she knew how to take care of herself, that it was going to happen one way or another, and that she could see it as an adventure or however else she wanted to see it. When I questioned her on it (aghast) she said: "Mom. C is like me. Her life will get better when C decides for it to get better and not a minute sooner. She is not making it here. She did not make it with her aunt. She did not make it with her stepfather. Now, she has to choose whether she is going to make it or not. I cannot do that for her. I won't have this rebellious teenager stuff. I won't have it. C is going somewhere, and I don't really care where. She will be fine, Mom. Don't worry. I know what I am doing."

And she was right, COM. The fifteen year old spent a night outside the bus station in a city strange to her when, midway through her journey, they closed the station for the night. (!) She caught her bus the next day, made it to her destination...and seems to be doing just fine.

So, I have been thinking about that.

When difficult child daughter was that age, she had already been in treatment twice. She would go through three more "treatments." Each time, she would go back to what got her into treatment in the first place. It was the same people she went back to now, in her thirties, that she ran with then, when she was a teenager.

And she wound up in treatment, again.

And our question was always "why". What did we do. How did this happen. Where did we go wrong. Who is to blame. How could she do this, to us and to herself. Again.

But what if there is no "why". It isn't like our kids didn't know any better. It isn't like our kids had parents who lived as they do. They had us for parents. So it gets to be, just like you are telling your son in your imaginary conversations with him...you did what you did. These are the consequences. What we have done before has not helped you. This is not what I wanted for you. Call me. Always, call me. I love you so much.

All that stuff is what is true.

*****

I was just thinking about all those years of paying for things, of taking the kids, of doing what we did. It paid off, in a way. I got to show off for a little while there, got to pretend I was one of the fortunate ones whose child was something respectable.

But who was all that angst for? Was it because my child was in danger? Or was it because she was not what I wanted her to be.

Or was it both. And over time, legitimate and illegitimate fears and rages and worries coalesce. Limbic pathways are created. Response becomes automatic. Even trying to figure out how we feel enough to name how we feel becomes impossible. Everything is all messed up together. We choose the responsible position: Get them on their feet, again. Over time, we resent it. We are aging. Tired. So angry. We rebel. Fall apart. Rebel.

Why can't we just say what we mean?

Because we are afraid of that mishmash of emotion that we don't understand. Betrayal is in there, too.

She is still my same daughter. Only somehow, since I really believed it was over...I don't seem to see her, or myself, the same way.

It no longer mattered who was wrong, what I did, what she did.

So...who did this to me? Well, I did.

I think your son already knows all those things you want to tell him, Child.

He probably knows how angry and disappointed you are, too.

But whatever happens next, whoever it is he turns out to be, at the heart of it, that is your person. Your son, for better or worse or whatever comes next. It's like, we cannot change that bond we feel. I just wonder, looking at the way I see everything so differently now...how is it I missed that my daughter was her own?

That my son is his own? How did I ever let it get to the point that my own son acts and talks like he passionately hates me...and I discount it?

Discount him?

No, I think our kids deserve true things from us.

Not abuse. Not name-calling or labeling. No blaming.

It has to go back to that primal connection with a defenseless child. Maybe we never let go of that. Ever. If our son is the President, we still love him as our child, we still protect him, become angry if he is rude and etc. Only the President can say "I'm the President, mom. You did good." Our kids can only say "You are right. I am in jail. You did not do good. Or, I did not do good. Or, who is to blame. Or, why did this happen."

And etc.

And that primal stuff needs to help them make it, survive it, overcome it.

But is that their "stuff" or...ours?

So the thing that needs to change is that part of us that judges ourselves or the kids because bad things are happening to our kids. That part of us that categorically refuses to accept what they are doing, who they've become. "How could you have stolen that XBox when you knew...." He did know. Maybe he was hungry...but he has been eating at soup kitchens and so on.

So, really...your son picked this.

Drug use.... My daughter was using mega drugs. Anything that came along. Really, my response should have been "Not a penny. Love you , love you so much, but not going to do the drug thing or the gambling thing with you." We should have been able to be clear and easy with that decision. But we were filled with rage, with betrayal, with disgust.

That money we gave her made it possible for us to take the easy way out.

It's all that rage we're afraid of. We don't want to label them further. We believe for them that they are better than they are...but they are the same person. They aren't better or worse, they just are.

Looks like I've gone beyond my ability to explain myself, again.

It is a really difficult thing to put into words.

But...what would happen if you trusted your son enough to tell him the truth? Not to try to destroy him, not to abuse him or rub his face in it. But just to say what you posted, here?

What do you think he would feel?

The question is simple enough: Will you post bail.

Your answer is appropriate Child, because you have already done that for him ~ done all that, and more.

You can love him and tell him the truth, both.

How could we not be angry? We dreamed such different dreams for our babies, for our little boys and girls. We are so mad at ourselves for something we did that was wrong, or they would not be in danger, now. What if that isn't true? What if the truth is that we loved them strong enough that they operate by a different value system than the one we tried to teach them, altogether?

Both my kids say the strangest, brightest things, COM. They see what is going on around them with a clarity of vision that is astonishing. I see that same characteristic in so many of our difficult children. (What about the drug piece, I ask myself, here. I don't know. But I do know our kids know more about drugs and drug use than we do. And they do it again, even after they are clean of the addiction.)

I could be wrong. But something more is going on here than we can see, I think. What I do know is that if a mother could change any of this for her children, those parents who ultimately find their ways here are the parents determined enough that those kids should have fallen right into line.

But they didn't. Fighting us every step of the way, becoming more and more impossibly hateful and rude, they choose something else altogether.

There is something here too about difficult child daughter having had all those things I wanted for her, and throwing every bit of it ~ along with any hope of ever having it back again (maybe), right down the drain.

She told us, before this happened, that she didn't think the go-to-work-mow-the-grass-go-to-sleep life was working for her.

So...it isn't like they don't know what they are doing.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Oh, brother. Talk about dominating your thread, Child. But I went back to Maslow. The highest category? The Self Actualization part? There is no more stringent morality than the morality of the streets, of the jails and gangs and prisons. Creativity, spontaneity, problem solving, lack of prejudice, acceptance of facts. When I think about the things either of my kids tell me about their lives, about who they know and what that means...this is the level they are. Prejudice? Non-existent. Judgment? WHO ARE THEY GOING TO JUDGE?!? They are continually judged, chased away from the tourist areas, begging for things to eat or to wear.

Like those monks whose practice it is to beg, each day, for their bowl of food.

The next level down: Esteem. The intimacy of life on the streets ~ the lack of plumbing, showers, everything, creates an intimacy and an interdependence (at least, according to difficult child daughter) unlike anything I have experienced. Loyalty. Checking in with one another in the morning. Who was beat, picked up by the police, dead? Who needs to be checked on. They mirror a different value system than ours...but esteem, come of bare bones honesty, of being in the same pitiless place in life, breeds a closeness and a kind of integrity we know nothing about.

Safety. Initially, I believed this one to be true. Surely, they are not safe.
But during her time on the streets? My daughter was not beat to the degree she was, once she was "safely" off the streets. Street dangers are clear and well-known. (According to difficult child daughter.)

What can happen behind closed doors....

Truly, they don't have the basics. And yet, somehow, they survive. Even in the middle of blizzards, in the middle of below zero nights...they survive. Once they have done that, they are free in a way we know nothing about. Free of the fear. The fear of disapproval, of not having the right car or living in the right neighborhood or getting the promotion.

They have the option, most times, of choosing a shelter but they don't.

Is it that we see through our eyes a different reality than the one they see through their I've-been-there-and-the-other-place eyes?

Ultimately, society would not function, if everyone did what the homeless are doing. Someone has to create things, ship food in, provide medical care.

So, is it a question of abrogating responsibility? Those who inherit wealth...isn't that what they do, too? Nothing productive, because they don't have to? Never touch the principle, lest you fall off the wagon the others are pulling. (That idea comes from Looking Backward, by Edward Ballamy.) So, the homeless are doing the same thing in a way, only there are no protections for them, like there are for the titled or the wealthy.

Okay, so that is beyond the scope of this thread. But on the Hierarchy of personhood and development...I agree that those characteristics are real. I think we learn, grow, wherever we are. It may be that the kids devolve when we parent too long. That drug or alcohol addled brains don't develop...except that so many geniuses in every field have been drug and alcohol addled.

Just something I was thinking about, especially in relation to the spiritual aspects of your thread, Child.

I am loving this discussion.

Perhaps we have nothing to forgive. And nothing to forgive ourselves for.

Cedar

 

[SuZir]

Maslow's theory has been widely criticised partly for the things SoC touched in her post. When I was first taught Maslow's hierarchy of needs eons ago, I was also right away taught it is far from undisputed theory, but it is useful tool in marketing etc. Basically real life proves it wrong. Many of the most famous artwork, poetry etc. have been done by people, who have not secured basic needs. Still they undisputedly are interested about highest level needs like expressing themselves.

It is also not about people trying to fulfil higher level needs being 'in higher level of morality, consciousness' or anything like that. What Maslow meant was, that when you are hungry or afraid for your life, many tend to think less about ideologist goals and are focus more to more basic needs. That of course have been proved wrong by real life. If people would always be more worried about their safety than for example ideological goals, we would not have terrorists for example.

It is kind of lucky too, though we could of course well live without terrorists etc. Being able to focus to higher level goals even if fundamentals are not met allows some hope for our kids when they are in rock bottom. They may be able to have some interest in becoming sober etc. higher level goals even though they may be homeless, short of food and so on. Human beings are much more versatile than Maslow's theory gives us credit. And much less rationalistic.

 

[SuZir]

Too late to edit my post, but Maslow's theory is about what motivates people and was first used also in developmental psychology but has been replaced by attachment theory long time ago. Nowadays it used in management and marketing mostly, also at times in sociology.

Of course in everyday sense there seems to be lots of sense, it seems likely that one isn't that interested about poetry, religion, doing the right thing, having loving relationship with their family or things like that, if their basic needs are not met and they are without food, shelter and safety. It seems reasonable that in those circumstances people would focus on getting food, warm and dry bed and so on with less regard to what is right or wrong, how their family thinks or feels or if they look cool or righteous while doing it. And in some level it is true. Desperate times breed desperate deeds. But it is not a fundamental truth and even a street person can at times act lovingly towards for example family members and not for example steal from them just to get food. In fact many do. And they tend to build their own communities and own moral systems, even when living really rough.

Things are really not quite desperate and hopeless as Maslow suggests.

 

[Childofmine]

Ah, this is each one of us, right here on this site. I am so thankful for each person here, who has walked this walk, and who comes back to share their pain so that we might give, and then we share our own pain and others can give to us. We have to work on ourselves first, before we can truly help anybody else. And then we have to define what help really is. Great post this morning from Rohr.


Wounded Healers
Friday, April 11, 2014

Only people who have suffered in some way can save one another—exactly as the Twelve-Step Program also discovered. Deep communion and dear compassion is formed much more by shared pain than by shared pleasure. I do not know why that is true.

“Peter, you must be ground like wheat, and once you have recovered, then you can turn and help the brothers” (Luke 22:31-32), Jesus says to Peter. Was this his real ordination to ministry? No other is ever mentioned. I do believe this is the ordination that really matters and that transforms the world. Properly ordained priests might help bread and wine to know what they truly are, but truly ordained priests are the “recovered” ones who can then “help” people to know who they are too. We have been more preoccupied with changing bread than with changing people, it seems to me.

In general, you can lead people on the spiritual journey as far as you yourself have gone. You can’t talk about it or model the path beyond that. That’s why the best thing you can keep doing for people is to stay on the journey yourself. Transformed people transform people. And when you can be healed yourself and not just talk about healing, you are, as Henri Nouwen so well said, a “wounded healer.” Which is the only kind of healer!

 

[recoveringenabler]

Deep communion and dear compassion is formed much more by shared pain than by shared pleasure.

truly ordained priests are the “recovered” ones who can then “help” people to know who they are too

and when you can be healed yourself and not just talk about healing, you are, as Henri Nouwen so well said, a “wounded healer.

I believe this to be true too COM. I found that deep connection to others walking the same treacherous path in support groups............. and it is certainly true here for those of us who share our pain and can bear witness to another's pain.......Compassion is profound when you can be present for another's suffering without judging, retreating, minimizing or in any way invalidating it. I don't think one can be truly present for that level of suffering, holding the space for it to simply 'be', without having been in those shoes.

Pain drops us down to the bottom of ourselves, pushing out our recognition that the 'other' is suffering as well.......... then we can be with their pain, hold it in our hearts and allow it to just be. I believe that in that level of intimate sharing, that sense of being known is remarkably healing in and of itself.

In the presence of a "wounded healer", it is safe to show up, to reveal oneself, to allow oneself to be known because that sense of empathy and compassion comes forth freely and with a depth of integrity. And, it is born out of that shared pain.

I can feel that level of deep communion with those who have walked through the fire and emerged out of the ashes reborn........and I am grateful for the profound gift of their presence.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

"Peter, you must be ground like wheat, and once you have recovered, then
you can turn and help the brothers”

I have been reading Eckhardt Tolle, have been reading and thinking Pema Chodron. Was it Peter's ego, his story-telling, making sense of things self, that needed to be ground to nothing before he could be of any value to himself or anyone else?

Is that what is being ground out of us? The ego, the fear of shame, the pride and isolation in "perfect"? I have been thinking and reading about the phrase "to pray continually." In practice, that would mean holding conscious awareness of the sacred in every smallest daily activity.

Making each action perfect by total absorption in it.

This is both easy and impossible to do!

The next time you take clothes out of the dryer, think of this. Then, pay attention. Open to the texture and heat, to the scent. See your hands, smoothing and folding. It changes the whole experience.

I have been popping into and out of that look at things, lately.

It feels like limitless time.

And yet, only a minute or two will have passed.

How can reality be both those things?

*********************

My favorite writer, my favorite book, tells a story of substitution across time. Tells of a descendent holding the fear of an ancestor, making it possible for him to go to the stake (for heresy) with courage. He prays for a miracle, prays for the fear to be taken away.

And it is.

He goes up in a blaze of glory.

No fear.

That was the miracle. That the fear, the crippling, ego-driven, shaming fear, would be taken away.

The theme of the book is that we can, having suffered and come through, hold strong for someone else by an act of intention. And that time doesn't matter.

"The burden was inevitably lighter for him than for her, for the rage of a personal resentment was lacking. He endured her sensitiveness, but not her sin; the substitution there, if indeed, there is a substitution, is hidden in the central mystery of Christendom which Christendom itself has never understood, nor can."

Charles Williams
Descent Into Hell

Is that what it means, to remain present? To, as Christ is said to have told us, "Be not afraid."

Cedar