I miss my sister...for the first time in say 55 years.

[Scent of Cedar *]

I jump to fearing that the vulnerability will continue the rest of my life.

If we are real, vulnerable will be the blessing of our lives. When we feel vulnerable, we are totally present. Explore it. Nothing bad will happen. Very many good things begin with vulnerable. This is where we heal.

Vulnerable is the best thing. It is where we are real.

Shame is some abuser's gift, and can be safely discounted, or used to learn more about how we were hurt in the first place, Copa.

I read about the boss this morning. That was abusive. He was an abuser. That is why that happened. Because abusers abuse.

Every. Single. Time.

Shame is a key.

When I feel vulnerable

When I feel vulnerable...I am real. No one knows how to do this right, Copa. Perfection is what we see when we only see the end result. I have a quote somewhere that I don't have time to find for you right now, that says something like: we need to stop comparing our insides with other people's outsides. Inside, we are all unsure. Inside, we are all taking our cues from one another. Real boats rock. Real life is an uncertain thing. If we can remain present, we will soon feel safe within ourselves. There is nothing we need to do. We are here on purpose.

Not everyone is going to like us.

We will betray, and we will be betrayed, and the only choice we get about any of it is whether to forgive it if we can. Whether to forgive ourselves, Copa. Forgiving the other guy is not even our business. We need to forgive ourselves for having been in that position, for allowing ourselves to have seen ourselves through unkind or condemnatory eyes, and for believing, for even one instant, that what anyone else thinks takes precedence over what we know.

People are playing games all the time.

We need to create safe harbor, a resting place, for ourselves, and we need to stand up unapologeticly when that is what is required.

That is what a boundary is. A place we erect where no one else can go. a resting place for ourselves where we declare the time, not someone else.

First, we need an internal locus of control.

When we feel vulnerable, we can choose ten thousand things. If we can sit quietly with the feeling, we will come to welcome those times of real, and even, to seek them.

Vulnerable is who we are.

Real. Alive.

Perfect is the myth.

:O)

When I decide to stop doing something that may be good for me (like walking daily) I fear that I will never do it again.

The only thing we strive to do is be present. Just walk outside. Smell the breeze, see the sun, hear the birds.

Here is something interesting. So, pick the tiniest weed from the side of the driveway. Do you see its complexity?

Yet, it is only a weed.

Turns out, the world is so different than we knew.

To savor. That is what you are choosing, now. Savor the wind, or the heat. Listen to the sounds of the smallest things.

The world is so different than we knew.

I start believing that for the rest of my life I will not be able to this thing, and all other things that I have done easily in the past.

Who could say?

For right now, for this minute, you are choosing not to walk.

Maybe you are bored with walking. I don't know about that, but I do know we are forever growing, expanding, learning new ways to see. Good rest, time away, somewhere to learn a different perspective ~ all those things are part of self reclamation.

I do know that.

When I start to organize papers or to pay bills, and begin to feel anxious, I think that the anxiety will continue unless I stop.

They say we can do anything for fifteen minutes. Set a timer. After fifteen minutes, do something else. What will happen is that you will prioritize. Fifteen minutes a day, every day, will have you so organized you won't recognize yourself.

You can do anything for fifteen minutes. Even if all you do today is gather them all together. Put them in a basket.

Done.

For now.

Small steps are okay.

They add up.

When I stop doing something because of anxiety, I go to bed.

Yay! Add some music you love. Add a book. Add something beautiful to wear.

Begin to cherish yourself where you are.

Keep your gratitude journal beside the bed. Do that, list those five things today that you are grateful for.

Then, bless yourself and rest.

Maybe you have dreaming to do. Begin journaling your dreams.

I then start thinking I will have to stay in bed for the rest of my life.

No, only for this time of crisis.

You need rest, and kindness.

I believe the voice that tells me the anxiety will stop if I stop doing chores.

What else are you telling yourself about anxiety and chores? You already know how to do this. Are you doing chores to distract yourself? What would happen if you journaled three pages, and then did chores?

If you made yourself your first priority?

Could that be what is happening, here? Like a butterfly emerging from her cocoon, your life, your vision, may have changed. Though it would be frightening for her to contemplate flight, there would be so little point for a butterfly to continue doing the things that saved her life while she was a caterpillar.

Frequently I empower some other women to feel they can do things better than can I.

That is a good thing, Copa.

You are generous in spirit. You see the strength in them and name it. You just aren't able to see your own strength. Someone taught you once, a long time ago, that you dare not use your strength. And yet, you are still here.

Now, you are having a look at all that strong.

I am excited for you.

It is real.

:O)

Perfection is not real. The strength and flexibility to leap and tumble and fly?

You had that all along.

You were taught to distrust it, to disbelieve.

Forgive yourself.

Know how I know that? Because that is what happened to me.

As they always are, my abuser was, sadly for her, incorrect. Once I am free of her, she will be alone. Here is a secret I know: For there to be an abuser, there must be a victim, someone groomed somewhere along the way for victimization. Without a victim (should the victim say, change his or her mind about the rightness of his or her victimization), without a victim, the abuser will have to face the demons on her own.

And that is the abuser's worse fear.

And that is what you have been protecting her from, all of your life.

But she is the one who picked to do the bad thing.

You can declare the abuse meaningless, pointless, stupid. And then, you can declare: Free.

When I sense that an acquaintance feels uncomfortable with something that transpired between us...I take responsibility for same.

The triumph here is that you see it.

If you can just keep allowing yourself to see, and to savor, you will find things change.

There is nothing you need to do.

Healing happens on its own. All we need to do is stop tearing off the scab.

We are meant to be whole, Copa. We were always meant to be whole.

When I feel vulnerable....I feel vulnerable. It is a feeling, nothing more, nothing less

No. There is a great deal more happening. You are no longer masking your feelings. Feeling masking is what we do while we are caterpillars. Butterflys, on the other hand....

:O)

I imagine it is quite a leap of faith for the butterfly too, to believe she can fly.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Have a basket full of things to work on bed, for when I am anxious.

Oh boy, this idea sucks!!!!

Pray for yourself when anxiety comes. It is trying to get you to listen, Copa.

You are a butterfly, now.

New day, much to learn.

Little time.

Have people work with me in the house until I am no longer anxious when I work.
If I feel I have to subordinate my abilities with a certain person, or take responsibility for their discomfort limit interactions with that person until I better understand the dynamic.
Identify tasks in the house that are very circumscribed and time limited. Have the expectation that I will complete the task, regardless of the feelings some up.

That is how your caterpillar self did life, Copa.

Butterflys are beautiful, fragile, exceedingly strong creatures. Migrating to Mexico, sipping nectar for the flight.

That is how beautiful, and that is how strong.

Each was a caterpillar once, too.

Until she learned her own strength.

You are no longer a caterpillar, or you would not be experiencing anxiety over the old patterns, the things that kept you safe until today.

Perhaps safe is not enough, anymore, Copa.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

When people hurt me, I think that they think they are justified in doing so because of the stories they tell themselves about us and themselves.

The horrible part of this is that if you allow it they can safely believe it, too. Abusers abuse because they abuse. They are differently wired than we are.

Abuse in nothing personal.

It is not personal to you.

If you could know your abuser's past, and there are so many degrees of exposure and abuse, you would find the pattern of it.

That is how you know you were targeted, from the beginning.

Caterpillars look very different than butterflies. Abusive people hate to see courage or strength or beauty because they are hiding from their own.

They will destroy you, every time.

They would love a world of caterpillars that never suspected their own truths.

And they would kill them dead before they begin to change, before they begin to awaken and to claim their true natures, if they could do it.

That is what abusers do.

Nothing personal to it, at all.

Fear.

That is what drives them.

Fear.

It is hard to be afraid of the usual things when you are dancing with the Sun.

(Another Smile. The smile machine is not working now.)

Thank heaven for that one. Sucks, to smile all the time while people are eviscerating your liver so they won't feel badly about the blood on their shoes.

Stop smiling, Copa. No frowning, either. Just watch, and listen. You will be amazed.

Quiet inside, Copa.

The world is a very different place than we knew.

We are very strong.

Does my sister consciously hate me? I mean is HATE written in her mind's eye?

Yes.

That is why she hides it from herself.

Here is a secret.

One day, she will decide she has been a caterpillar long enough, too. She will begin her change.

Until then, communication will be a difficult thing.

I don't imagine caterpillars believe it, when the butterflies sing.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

If we are real, vulnerable will be the blessing of our lives. When we feel vulnerable, we are totally present. Explore it. Nothing bad will happen. Very many good things begin with vulnerable. This is where we heal.

If we can remain present, we will soon feel safe within ourselves.

Cedar, I feel shame when I am vulnerable. I fear that people will hurt me. I understand now that those people who would hurt me when I am vulnerable are abusers. I can identify the fear of abuse as a memory that is not me. I can identify the shame as theirs, not mine.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I feel shame when I am vulnerable

Here is the beginning of a story, Copa. I have posted it here before, but you were not with us, then. Now, you are here with us.

I am glad you found us.

Here is the story:

Once upon a time in a faraway land where time and distance had lost all meaning, there was born to the peasantry a generation of female children whose task and whose talent it would be to unravel the tangled skeins of deceit, viciousness, and trickery that bound the hearts, the souls, and the bloodlines of those families into which each would be born.

The story goes on to describe how each of the souls who would elect to accept the challenge of the cursed genetic lines was chosen. Some of the little girls don't make it. They are caught in the curse of the line. Those who do break the curse and change the fate of the genetic line do so through exploring, and listening to, their own senses of shame.

That is where the secrets are.

Shame is a signpost.

Can you hear a story beneath the vulnerability, Copa?

Can you hear those stories and can you really hear me when I tell you we are here on purpose?

For whatever reason, my family of origin is dysfunctional. I am living proof of it. I buried all those things so deeply and created my life. Everyone always concentrates on the bad things that happen as the result of abuse. And there are so many hurtful things, I agree. But to have survived a toxic upbringing creates a certain kind of strength and compassion and empathy and even, protectiveness. Choosing to free ourselves from the toxicity makes of us a kind of beacon. I did it. I know you can do it, too.

I am certain this is so.

You have the strength to do this or you would not be doing it. Anxiety is a part of it because all secrets are sealed in shame. Sealed. Threats, overt or covert, were made or assumed or presumed. It is oh, so easy to victimize those who have already been broken because they have been groomed, by whoever abused them as children, to service abusers ~ any abuser ~ in that same way.

That is what our abusers did to us, Copa.

Groomed us for a life of that kind of service.

When we were little, we understood we would die without the adult's care. So, we had to believe the beatings and etc made sense. It was our determined and courageous way of believing we had some control over our lives or whether we would be dead. If we could just know what was the matter with us, we would correct it and our abusers would love us, not hate and revile us.

And we would live.

How sad for us that this is so, Copa.

We think everyone who abuses us knows that same secret, unknowable truth our abuser hated and hurt us for. We allow ourselves to be judged and condemned and found wanting in a futile effort to learn what is wrong with us, to see it, finally and once and for all, for ourselves.

That takes more courage than most people understand exists.

But here is the truth: abusers abuse because they abuse. There is no secret. Abusers abuse everyone they meet as soon as they see an opportunity. Not everyone was broken when they were little girls or little boys. Those whose pasts do not include the horrors of having been a vulnerable child targeted by an out of control adult recognize the potentially abusive person for what he or she is: a jerk, a pointless and clueless and mindlessly stupid bully pushing a way crummy agenda.

They say: I see you. I see who you are. Buzz off, you freaking bully.

We say: Hello, mom.

Often, we marry our abusers. If we are fortunate, if we have courage, old issues are exposed and addressed and healed. If we are not fortunate, or if we refuse to see, then we replay the same scenarios over and over again until we stand up.

That is what The Wizard of Oz is all about.

Standing up.

I fear that people will hurt me.

They will. Relish those times for the opportunities they are. People hurt one another all the time. Those of us who have been abused believe it is something personal. Just as it was the first time we were targeted and hurt...there is nothing personal about it. If we had not been there to be abused, our abusers would have abused the next person who came along.

That is the core thing we do not understand.

And then, one day, we do.

The next betrayal occurs...only all at once, we see it for just what it is.

A game.

A bully who misjudged his or her mark.

And we are free.

And it keeps happening because in real life, people are tested by sociopathic types all the time. They are out there, loose in the world. We are only vulnerable until we see them.

Peek a boo.

The shame is on them.

The coward was always them.

They are very good at naming us. They are so good at that that we believe their lies over the truths in our hearts. Then, one day, we don't believe them at all, anymore.

It happens just like that.

Peek a boo.

I don't get the win in what they do. But I see them, now.

And I suppose they don't like that very much.

I suppose they don't like me very much.

But I do.

And here I am.

Standing.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

Cedar, my dear friend, welcome back.

I just read a very interesting article about how we will never know why they do it or did it. You can no thave a conversation and ask them as they will either give a circular answer or no answer at all or cut you off because they have no answers and don't want to discuss us. We have to reconcile to ourselves that we will never know why. I loved reading that. It was so affirming.

Next it said that the only answer to not getting caught up in their games is complete no contact. No e-mails, no phone calls, no sudden calls out of the blue spouting new expectations, nothing. I don't like the idea of that. I always like to leave the door open and hope that this time is different. But this time it made sense to me. We get nothing out of these relations other than pain and confusion and a warped view of how we lived. I find myself asking me, "Was it YOU who abused? WAS IT?" That is what "they" claim. But when my mind is clear and they have been all gone for long periodsof time, I know my answer. If I am an abuser, why can I live in peace with two men long term who both loved me and valued me? My first husband was a bad match for me and we did have words, but he always did tell me I had such a good heart and even called me a humanitarian. Maybe he exaggerated a bit...lol. But we lasted seventeen years and do not dislike one another even after a divorce. My current family is very peaceful and lacking in drama, fighting, and namecalling. Could it still have been me in my FOO? I don't know for sure. I am done asking myself the question. I am done with most of my FOO. Forever. No contact. For life. No more doubting my memories. No more doubting my character. No more....them. They won't care so I haven't hurt them and I will be reborn. My husband pointed out the only time I get really upset is when I am thrown into a tiff with them. usually I am passive and happy.

We will never know the answers to our questions. We can never even know if our critics have a point. We know their point, but we will never know why because they are poor communicators and can not express things or they hide from doing so. Acceptance. Radical acceptance. It is what it is. It would be nice if we always could find out the reaons everything happens in our lives, but that halppens to nobody. I accept that I will never know. And you should all accept that too. You will never know why.

But you can control how often you want to talk to people who make you feel badly about yourself because you deserve to celebrate the greatness within you and all of us. You can go low or no contact. I feel my case is extrme and requires no contact. You trust your own instincts and do what is best for you.

And, remember, you will have to accept that you will never get the answers to so many questions.

Don't worry....be happy because you are so worthwhile and the less you talk to those who try to make you feel bad, the more your mind will clear and you will see the truth about yourself. Your truth, not their truth.

Work calls. Have a great day, friends!!!!!

 

[Copabanana]

We think everyone who abuses us knows that same secret, unknowable truth our abuser hated and hurt us for. We allow ourselves to be judged and condemned and found wanting in a futile effort to learn what is wrong with us, to see it, finally and once and for all, for ourselves.

When I was 34 or so, I did another audacious thing. I left a secure but stultifying good enough job to go to graduate school. In a beautiful, magical place this graduate school was part of one of the best universities in the world. There were only a handful of fellow students, who had came from the world over to study here.

Finally I have shed my caterpillar skin, I thought. Only those students who had been chosen for the program attended seminars around large tables, except one retired man who was interested in the subject area, I forget what it was.

One afternoon before class, out of the blue this man began to chat. "There is something damaged and vulnerable about you", he said. "As if you have been severely injured by something in your past. You have been traumatized, I think. I see it in you."

My presence in this place, this program, had signified my belonging to a beautiful world. Promise and becoming were now me. I had believed that I was living my butterfly life.

In this moment, I had been revealed by this stranger for what I thought I had left behind, but in fact was still: damaged, defective, victimized.

My secret to him was no secret. He had seen it, in me, that mark. My shame at that moment was wordless. As if he had pinned me down dead, that stranger had named me. Metamorphosis ended.

Ten years later caterpillar me received the graduate degree. The promise of transformation.. of leaving degradation behind...had long been been extinguished.

 

[BusynMember]

I understand how horrified you must have been, but we are magnets for bullies and for people who are highly sensitive or even dangerous. But I learned a lesson, Copa, and this was a long time ago. DO NOT BE ASHAMED! So what if this perceptive or possibly psychopathic man knew? Psychopaths are very good at finding vulnerable peple..maybe he was one. Not everyone saw what he saw. And you did not owe him an answer and you had nothing to feel shamed about. BEING ABUSED IS NOT YOUR SHAME.

It's sick how our abusers do make us feel shame as if we are bad people.

One of the questions you are asked if you are being interviewed to find out if you have suffered trauma or been abused is "Are you ashamed of your very existence?"

It's an important question. If YOU were the abuser your answer would be, "NO."

The abused answer "Yes."

These people make us feel inadequate, damaged, horrible, awful, evil, mean...everything that THEY are. Our abusers treat us the way they do (mean) on purpose, then blame us and because it is done early and in our FOO we tend to buy it. But we move on. We live with other peole. Not one other person I have EVER lived with, including my ex, thought I was mean at all...in fact, he thought I was TOO nice. My mother used to ALWAYS tell me "You're a TAKER, not a GIVER." I'm not sure what she meant by that. it was never true. I did get feisty with her because she was so mean to me, but I didn't TAKE anything from her. One of those things I'll never understand. But it's also something I have to let go and have let go. I'm actually a much better giver than a taker and do not require much to be happy...so I know who I am and who they think or thought I was doesn't matter. But, yes, it causes shame until we realize that the only people who think this way is our sick FOO and they have their own problems. If we were that horrible, the otehrs we have lived with would agree that we are abusive and awful. The only people who have ever said that to me are...you guessed it...FOO.

Ok, I cared or I never would have felt the shame. But I'm proud of myself today. I have come so far in spite of starting out with a horrible mother, no household rules, neurological differences and a childhood mood disorder. I am happy and content and that is enough for me. Shame on them for trying to shame us.

The abused person feels shame. The abuser does not because he does not feel any remorse for hurting us, which is their goal. They feel justified. I don't know if this is true in your family, but my family has many people in it who are challenged in the empathy department. People without empathy have no problem hurting others. Remember that. They should feel the shame, but they don't because they feel they are right. You feel the shame because you are sensitive and vulnerable and kind and you worry that maybe you hurt them and that hurts YOU. But, if you had, THEY would feel the shame that you feel. Know what I mean?? But they don't feel shame because you did not do anything to harm them and shame them. They did it to you.

 

[Copabanana]

But to have survived a toxic upbringing creates a certain kind of strength and compassion and empathy and even, protectiveness. Choosing to free ourselves from the toxicity makes of us a kind of beacon. I did it. I know you can do it, too.

When I was a little girl I lived life mostly outside. The climate in my Coastal City was moderate and our home was yards away from the sea. The smell of wet backyard sand and wet clay below that...stays with me still. Hours were safely spent with friends. Beetles, ladybugs, worms, spiders, caterpillars and butterflies.

School wanted collections. I caught my friends the butterflies lovingly placing them in bottles with alcohol soaked cotton. I put their broken bodies into boxes, and pinned their wings, such a pretty display. How much did I know that my body and wings were broken as were theirs.

Butterflys are beautiful, fragile, exceedingly strong creatures. Migrating to Mexico, sipping nectar for the flight. That is how beautiful, and that is how strong.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Could it still have been me in my FOO? I don't know for sure. I am done asking myself the question. I am done with most of my FOO. Forever. No contact. For life. No more doubting my memories. No more doubting my character. No more....them. They won't care so I haven't hurt them and I will be reborn.

I think that feeling of "I am responsible" is twisted into us as an intrinsic part of abuse. It is what abuse is. Spousal abuse, child abuse, parent abuse, any kind of abuse. Date rape is a form of abuse where the raped woman is blamed, and the abuser believes it is her fault, too. We don't get to protest, we don't get to think our own thoughts or value our own opinions. Our locus of control is not in here, in the heart of us where it belongs. Until we heal and recover ourselves, it is out there, with our abusers.

Maybe that sense of responsibility is how we try to regain a sense of power out of the powerlessness and chaos of abuse.

We grow up believing we don't matter enough for our opinions to matter. We trust our abuser's assessments of who we are because we have been taught not to trust ourselves, not to think for ourselves, not to matter to ourselves for ourselves. Our value to the abuser is as depersonalized objects that can be used to reflect whatever reality the abuser needs to believe.

There is something I read once that goes: "Which of us is so unimportant that what passes between us has no meaning?" There was no meaning in our interactions with our FOO. None of it was real. Everything was twisted to serve the dysfunction.

This is classic in abuse cases, this business of breaking the spirit. You see the same dynamic at work in prisoner of war camps, in religious cults, in concentration camps.

It is how dehumanization is accomplished.

It is probable they still do not see us as fully human.

They see only themselves.

Or maybe I am the one who is not seeing correctly.

I know I cannot unsee what I now see. I know I knew it was wrong, what was happening, but what I thought about any of it didn't matter.

Now, it does.

It matters, to me.

It really has nothing to do with whether the same FOO (I love that! FOO!!!! :O) who committed the abuse in the first place is willing to validate anything now or not. It doesn't matter to them whether we require validation to heal the toxicity. If they were people who could empathize to that degree, the abuse would never have happened.

But it did happen, and it is still happening.

We don't need them to declare and heal ourselves.

We are very strong. We have been alone, healing and reviewing our situations and their consequences, for a long time. When we did need them, when we do turn to them, they use our vulnerability to mount attacks that would not otherwise have succeeded.

This does not happen in normal families.

This is not love.

This is dysfunction.

That is why they liken dysfunctional families of origin to toxic ponds. It is toxic every time you go there. It isn't toxic one time and freshwater the next.

It is toxic, deadly toxic, every time. A finely balanced ecology of toxicity where nothing can change.

Maybe they can't help it, either.

I wish it had been different. I am losing that fiery focus necessary for figuring it all out. I want to be healthy and strong and to feel joy and contentment and be present, really present. That is being accomplished. I am leaning in.

It seemed like I always believed we could all come together somehow, and that we should come together, and that we would be happy when we did.

The difference is that I know now I cannot change us.

Maybe I am the only one who thinks we need saving.

It is all so twisted.

I do not require myself to fill any role for them. Not after what they did when my daughter was beat. Before that, there was no way they could touch me or hurt me that mattered for very long. Denial aint just a river in Egypt, right? But for them to have hurt my daughter, for my sister to have stalked her the way she did, and then, hurt her again ~ that matters.

Really, it's like: snip.

BOOM

Probably that's where the fire is coming from to get through this once and for all. I know what they did. What they say doesn't matter. The things they talk about don't matter. They seem united against anything that does not reflect their own reality. Which is a pretty good description of a dysfunctional family, I suppose.

That's how the toxicity continues to fuel itself, maybe.

I still don't get the win.

Cheap trick, right? It's all twisted up.

I never had what I think I am grieving when I am sad that I have no family of origin to trust or believe in. Those of us who have those things have so much to be thankful for. Those of us who never had those things...I don't know.

We can learn how it all works so we can stop the pain of repeated betrayal.

I don't know why it continues to be something I even think about.

I will be glad when I am through it.

I suppose it is still the surprise of realizing what it really was, all along.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

There is something I read once that goes: "Which of us is so unimportant that what passes between us has no meaning?" There was no meaning in our interactions with our FOO. None of it was real. Everything was twisted to serve the dysfunction.

This is classic in abuse cases, this business of breaking the spirit. You see the same dynamic at work in prisoner of war camps, in religious cults, in concentration camps.

I worked most of my career in institutions such as these housing the broken. Where the task at hand is to break further the most broken and damaged among us. I recognize that those were my people. Despite the difference in status and role they knew me as one of them. While there was officially a task at hand between us, we knew what our purpose was. Recognition of spirit, the honoring of experience, sharing of heart, the beginnings of trust. Laughter.

After years of this work...I had changed. I had been listened to. I had been cherished. I had been trusted. I had been respected for my heart. Who had been treated?

 

[BusynMember]

I wish it had been different. I am losing that fiery focus necessary for figuring it all out. I want to be healthy and strong and to feel joy and contentment and be present, really present. That is being accomplished. I am leaning in.

Cedar...I so applaud you in this. We have actually come far together, as in at the same time. Suddenly I realize, as you do, that we don't need to figure it out. In fact, our FOO don't even make any sense. Think about it. Mothers not liking their kids. Turning kids against one another. Making at least one kid (or more) feel like crap? The siblings deciding to jump in and join the bullying, suffering no angst because they were not the abused ones, but saying they were...in what universe is anybody supposed to figure this out? It is irrational; illogical, like all dysfunctional families that are sick? I hope you MEAN it that you have stopped trying to figure it out because I did stop. Why? Who knows why? The perpetrators themselves don't even know why. Maybe it started because my mther had a low self image, due to her mother giving HER a low self image and favoring her son, so she felt the need to make her oldest daughter feel useless, selfish, stupid, lazy, and have no good in her? That's just a wild guess. She did try to do it and succeeded for a while. But I'll never know why she played her sick game until her death. And I am not going to waste time trying to ruminate over it.

You shouldn't either.

Here is a little bit of a secret.

Although I did call my mother to try to get some closure in this lifetime, I obviously knew she was not reciprocating. Of course I hoped one day she would, but I certanly did not consider the possibility great. I still tried because I fele that, as her daughter whom she felt had done her grevious wrongs, the right thing to do was to take the high road and to let her know I loved her (which I did at the time) and to continue to try to honor her because she gave birth to me, even though she had told me many times she felt nothing toward her pregnancy or toward me after I was born. I still wanted to do the right thing. I'm sorry I kept talking to her when she really didn't want me to. It was very foolish of me. She was smiling while we talked and thinking about how she had disowned me years ago and that I'd find out.

If I had not tried so hard to follow my beliefs, which are to try to work it out in your earth life, I would probably not have felt so hurt after she passed on. Maybe disowning me as her daughter would have hurt less as we would have then been no contact for a decade. I learned that you can't always work it out in this lifetime and that you do have to be good to yourself and protect yourself from people who intentionally hurt you. Therefore, I guess I will not be working anything out with "others" in this lifetime. I will not be taking this so called "high road" anymore...it is pointless with some people.


Cedar, maybe you should do the same. I know your FOO hurts you and has let you down and has made you feel like dirt, just as mine did. Is it worthwhile to maintain any contact at all? If you believe in God and Heaven of any sort, then certainly you must believe that even if it is ugly here and now that it can be resolved in a better place, where humans have more insight.

Cedar, hold your heart close and don't let anybody, even your FOO, play crazy games with you anymore. We can do this together. Actually, if you think about it rationally, there is NOTHING in it for us to know what they think about anything. So there is nothing in it for us to even acknowledge them. I think when people who don't know me ask me if I have siblings, I'm going to start to say "no" so that the subject of "Oh, ad where do they live and blah, blah, blah" doesn't even come up.

I am an Only Child. A happy, rather silly, young-at-heart only child with a wonderful family that is a family by choice, not by chance. And you have a wonderful husband that you picked out. We are blessed. We don't need to think of ourselves as part of the FOO. And I never will again. It is a freeing feeling to think of myself as ME!!!!!!

 

[Copabanana]

Maybe that sense of responsibility is how we try to regain a sense of power out of the powerlessness and chaos of abuse.

To believe that the world and their lives are so dangerous and that our caretakers so inadequate or evil, would make our child lives intolerable, ending our lives before they begin, as institutionalized infants shrivel and die without nurture.

Is it any surprise that we abandon and turn against ourselves so as to keep the illusion of care...and to keep close all we have? We join with them to attack ourselves...so as to LIVE.

They seem united against anything that does not reflect their own reality.

I used to use the image of a trapped animal gnawing their own flesh to be free. Except here it is the opposite: We gnaw away at our spirits...in order to stay close.

My life seems to have followed a cycle: I gnawed away at my spirit to have a Mother; I gnawed at my flesh to be free; to have independence of spirit and body; following the death of my Mother---the sense that neither that emancipation of spirit or independence were worth it, in retrospect I wish I had sacrificed my spirit to have stayed close to her.

I seek pardon from the charges against me: Guilty treasonous betrayer of my Mother, for trying to have an adult life.

 

[Copabanana]

Could that be what is happening, here? Like a butterfly emerging from her cocoon, your life, your vision, may have changed. Though it would be frightening for her to contemplate flight, there would be so little point for a butterfly to continue doing the things that saved her life while she was a caterpillar.

Yes, I believe this is so. The old ways to motivate myself are not working anymore. Force, fear, threat, desperation, panic. So over. Cruelty against myself is Laid Off. Fired. Expired. Ineffective. Outmoded. and Done with.

 

[Copabanana]

If my sister were to post, she would describe a sister with whom she has decided proactively to have no contact, and list the reasons, all so reasonable. She would describe her now dead mother in the same terms. She needed to separate herself completely from this toxic family. She did this. When she got cancer she wrote a letter to my then 86 year old mother to tell her she was toxic to her, as was I, and wanted no contact for we would kill her with our toxicity.

The only problem with this scenario was that already there was no contact; nor had there been for some time. My Mother and I had initiated the distance from my sister...To me the letter requesting no contact was to damage and destroy...an old lady...nothing more.

My issue is not "no contact" as I did not see or speak with my father in the 5 years before his death in 1982; nor did i see or speak with my Mother for what I remember to be close to a decade, during the same period. You know already I chose to not see my sister for an equally long period.

My musings are thus: there is the problem of perspective. We see easily our side...and with more difficulty see the other...who was it on this board who did not want distance as fall into judgement...projecting blame and responsibility to the other...wanting to own her part....so as to grow more completely. She said it more ably. Had I done more of that...what would have come of it?

Our lives are not a court of law. But who is the offender here?

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

This man had called it for what it was: my secret to him was no secret. He had seen it, in me, that mark. My shame at that moment was indescribable.

As it is with every courageous survivor, we need to stop running. It is what it is. SWOT is exactly right. What happened to us did happen.

It is a mark of pride that you've survived it, not a mark of shame that it happened.

You didn't do this, Copa. Not any of it. The adults in your life set up or allowed a toxic environment which glorified the horribly off-kilter reality of mental illness and then, brought children into it. Pretending it didn't happen, doing our best to love our abusers (and continue to allow them to victimize us, which is exactly what they do continue to do) is exactly what the abuser wants, forever. She does not see you as real. If the sister got the bad gene, you are not real to her, either.

You are Cinderella.

They aren't.

And you know how they felt about Cinderella.

And we know how that worked out for the stepmother and the stepsisters, too.

:O)



Until we can see how terribly wrong what happened to those sweet little girls we were really was, we are still seeing ourselves through our abuser's eyes.

We need to see our abuser through our own eyes, Copa. You not only have the right, but the responsibility, to judge your abuser.

What happened to you was wrong.

They like to hide behind terms like mother and wife and sister and grandmother. These are terms of honor. Abusers do not merit honor and would not recognize the difference between pretense and integrity if it jumped out and bit them.

Nothing is real in their worlds but them.

Everything in their worlds is about them.

No one else exists.

In normal families there is pride. In abusive families there is shame. In normal families there is support. In abusive families there is outrage and hatred that the abused would dare consider escaping from the weak, receptive little vessel the abuser has spent so much time softening up and battering into shape.

Growing up in an abusive family is like being marinated. It takes a long time for the abuser to get you where they want you. They poke and prod and test you too, just like a master chef prepares the meat, salivating the whole time.

Long knives.

We need to see that adult doing what he or she did to a child. To someone thirty to fifty pounds soaking wet. That is who our abusers were coward enough to take their sickness out on. That is how our abusers pretended they were who they wanted to be in their imaginations. When other adults put them in their places, they came home and beat us up, physically or verbally or emotionally. Our abusers are Walter Middys, Copa. Or they would not be abusers. They are cowards and bullies Copa or they would not be abusers.

They took our their hurt at their shortcomings, or at the fact that other adults put them in their places, on their own children.

You were just a little guy. You needed protection and cherishing to grow strong and whole and complete. Now, you need remothering.

Like me and like SWOT and like every one of us who have come through an abusive family system Copa, you will have to be your own best mother.

You will need to find a way to cherish and celebrate the strength of that little girl who was you. Witness for her, be there for her, now.

No shame, Copa.

Rage.

Here is the thing that I know: Once you can see what happened to you ~ not just the physical things, but the shame of who you were made to believe you are ~ you will be free of it, Copa.

Your abuser lied.

That is what abusers do.

They lie. They bully. They betray. They are cowards, Copa.

We owe them nothing.

I know this.

It happened to me.

It was your abuser who set this pattern up for you. You were targeted, and you were enslaved. All that you might have been and known and seen and cherished was twisted to serve your abuser's dysfunction.

That is like, a sin.

You need to learn to say "F you, mom."

It feels so wrong and so great!

And when you do?

No more shame, Copa.

Rage.

Whether you ever forgive your abuser is immaterial.

Abusers abuse because they abuse. They destroyed you...but it was nothing personal to you. Just as the lives of millions of people were snuffed out, are snuffed out every day to service some whacko's idea of protest or whatever it is, you were caught up in something, caught up in something evil, that had nothing to do with you.

Don't let them win, Copa.

Reclaim yourself.

Do not be afraid of your own rage. Set it free, and bless yourself when you do it.

You are here on purpose.

They tried to destroy you, Copa. They tried to twist your life into some ugly refection of their ongoing pathology.

Abusive people are very strange little ducks, and they lie, and they laugh when they hurt you.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

And they deny they abuse you and turn it around. Beware of that and laugh at it, if you can. I'm starting to do that.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

We can never even know if our critics have a point.

I am watching my family identity ~ the who I am in the family, the role I took on ~ change as my mother and my sister each validate the other's reality. It is a strange thing to see, SWOT.

There was a time when the joke was not "What would Jesus do?" but "What would Cedar do?" (I have posted about this before.)

It was my mother who told me that is how they talked about me during the time she lives with my sister.

That was a nasty little thing to say, I think. Something to ridicule and diminish me. My sister is uber religious. There would be no way she would confuse me with her version of You Know Who.

They do not say that anymore, that I know of, because everything is different now.

Could it be that my sister continues to pursue me because she wants me to know that my position in the family has changed? Could that kind of competition matter at this late date? Could it be that she had been, or still is, measuring the quality of her life against mine, against that very persona of protector and blah, blah, blah? That could be true. But I never got it that she hated me. So perhaps it is not so much that she hates me, but that she is recovering a sense of her own self esteem through assuming the caretaker's role where our elderly (and still nasty as a snake) mother is concerned? And therefore perceives me as a threat?

But why would that mean she would need to exclude our brother. Well, it could be that the other sibs are still seen as threats. She sees the man who wanted to marry my mother after my father died as a threat....

That would explain my mother's comment about how she enjoyed the jealousy between my sister and myself over who could do the most for our mutual mother.

It would make sense that someone who enjoyed denigrating others would relish being the object of intense jealousy between her adult daughters. That would accomplish two things, right? It would service the abuser's grandiosity, and it (jealousy) would stoke further hatred and prevent the siblings ever coming together.

So maybe that is it.

Maybe that feeling I call global shame is really jealousy. Now that my sister is okay in her life, it could be that I no longer see her as someone who needs protection and so, I am free to be jealous.

I think jealous is a normal thing that happens. But then, we normally get happy about the other guy's good fortune and that negates the jealousy.

They say (in The Artist's Way at Work) that jealousy teaches us where we want to go, next. We want those things for ourselves. According to Julia Cameron (the writer), we should listen to our jealous feelings and devote that energy to attaining whatever it was we wanted for ourselves, instead of to hating or denigrating the other guy.

So, I think that is a good descriptor of, and solution to, jealousy.

I could definitely be jealous of my sister's relationship to my mother. But I think what I feel is betrayed. We had that pact of non-exclusion I have posted about before.

But she made a point of excluding our brother. And she kept doing it, even after I told her she needed to keep contact with him about our mother during the time our mother was staying with my sister. (My mother does not keep regular contact with me, and did not contact my brother at all. His wife went through cancer treatments, my mother and sister knew...and never even sent a card.)

Unbelievable, right?

Weird things like that happen in my FOO all the time. That is the norm.

I know my sister has changed for the stranger since my mother has been staying with her in the winter.

My mom lives with my sister during the winter months. The jealousy comment was one of the first things my mother said to me when I saw her again, one summer.

Even this business of my sister continuing to pursue me.

I mean, I could be wrong about everything. Nothing about any of this makes sense.

Again, an extraordinary thing to see, and to be part of.

Lonely, though.

SWOT, it could be that our FOO do not know (or care) what is "true". What is true is what they say it is ~ and that is whatever helps them feel they are more worthy than you, more "you" than you, whether through money or possessions or appearance. Somehow, it has to do with the mother's or the father's attention. It has to do with squeezing the other sibs out, with making them unreal.

Even after we are all adults.

Maybe that is true.

It has been an extraordinary thing, to be aware of what I am seeing, of what it seems like I am seeing, and to watch it unfold.

I still can't believe it, except I do.

I don't get the win. Surely, the real person who is me is worth having, is worth knowing and cherishing and putting those uglinesses, those ugly old hurtful patterns, aside?

I don't know what fuels it at this stage in everyone's life.

But hatred seems to be rumbling away at will, alright.

Dysfunctional families operate out of a sense of scarcity. I think that is the lynchpin. There is not enough. Love is not limitless, it is a scarce commodity. What you get is taken from me.

All power funnels through the abuser.

And my sister must still see it that way.

Or maybe, just like we have been wondering about, my sister is just differently wired. She could be wired up like my mom.

That would explain everything. There are so many totally weird little pointless things....

Even, and maybe especially, the male my mother became involved with after my father's death is perceived as a threat to my mother's role and relationship to my sister and she hates him with passionate intensity.

Probably I have been fortunate to be able to see it working away even now, even when we are all so darn old it isn't even funny.

It's unbelievable that it could be what it is but it is.

I remember feeling that way when I first went into therapy. I would question what kind of person would say or believe such things about her own mother. I feel that way a little bit, now. What kind of person believes the kinds of things I am believing about my own mother, who is elderly and whom I should be protecting and cherishing, and about my own sister, younger than me and so, also needing protection and assistance and care.

Maybe that is it.

Maybe they resent that I see myself as someone able to help them ~ you know, to see myself as superior to them in that way?

I don't know.

What does that make me, to think these really crummy things about all of us and then tell someone else by posting it here.

It makes me someone alone in the world, I suppose.

If I had turned away from them, if I had somehow escaped when I learned to walk or when I was strong enough to just go, I would have been safer than I was where I was born and grew up.

So, alone now is a good thing.

It was always the right thing.

Soon, I will not feel interested enough about "why" for it to matter.

Then I will be free.

I used to use the image of a trapped animal gnawing their own flesh to be free. Except here it is the opposite: We gnaw away at our spirits...in order to stay close.

I think this is true, but in my case at least, it wasn't about staying close. There was no "close". In my case, I saw myself through my abuser's eyes.

Period.

That is the shame of it.

We all saw ourselves (and continue to see ourselves?) through our abuser's eyes.

There was no "close".

There was, and there continues to be, betrayal after betrayal, but I just don't get the win.

That's the part I don't get. What are they winning, now? I see the self esteem win. I can see that. I could understand the jealousy between my sister and myself. I have a certain amount of stuff but she was invited here and was welcomed and anticipated and planned for.

But though my mother came, my sister would not.

By the time she was ready to come here, I saw her differently. I imagine that was why she decided to come when she did.

Things had changed.

I just don't feel the same about her, or even, about my mother. But that doesn't feel like triumph. It feels like loss. And in my secret heart, I still wish I could have what I wanted. (Why do all my fantasies revolve around everyone sitting down to dinner?!? That throws me for a loop every time where my kids are concerned, too. WHAT IS IT WITH ME AND A DINNER TABLE?!?

***

I just don't get the win.

SWOT, you wonder whether your FOO will ever acknowledge what is real. I feel like mine not only acknowledges, but celebrates the twistedness of all of it. It's like there is still some evil engine, some whirling, ongoing hatred working away at the heart of things.

The win must be legitimized hatred. The win must be that the feelings...I don't know what the win is.

I would like to understand it though. I think I will not be safe from them until I know the why behind a game at this stage in all of our lives.

Or maybe I am seeing this wrong. It all seems unbelievable. How could it possibly be true? So, there is a little echo of "What kind of person...."

Vulnerable, still.

Cedar

Okay, but here is what I know about that: Alone is very good for me.

Alone is better than together, with them.

That is what I know.

Maybe I will have to do a ritual dinner. Beautiful china, white candles, fresh flowers...and all the empty places at my table.

Maybe I could grieve what is lost in that good way.

 

[BusynMember]

Could it be that my sister continues to pursue me because she wants me to know that my position in the family has changed? Could that kind of competition matter at this late date? Could it be that she had been, or still is, measuring the quality of her life against mine, against that very persona of protector and blah, blah, blah? That could be true. But I never got it that she hated me. So perhaps it is not so much that she hates me, but that she is recovering a sense of her own self esteem through assuming the caretaker's role where our elderly (and still nasty as a snake) mother is concerned? And therefore perceives me as a threat?

Cedar, although none of us can do anything but guess aoubt why t hey do what they do, I think you have some valid theories here.

My sister would cut me off all the time, for anything, I can't even remember why for most times. This last time it the ante was much worse. First of all, I threatened her with no contact if she ever went no contact again, which mean she could not come back at her convenience. That was telling her that I was taking my control back and she likes to be the one with the final "word"...and NC is it's own kind of word. Also, she was angered that I set a boundary and refused to, in my way of looking at things, enable her relationship with a man whom SHE admitted abuses her on many levels. Listening to her vent about him was a form of enabling and also drove me mad as I was sure he would hurt her, if not physically then emotionally until she finally had the guts to leave him. She never did leave him, but at least it wasn't because she had me to vent to to make her feel better.

I had always thought of her as the stable one in the family, but I started to see her as the least stable one and perhaps she knew it, although I never said that to her. It was pretty obvious. Stable people do not continue unhealthy patters regarding weight and working out, do not stay with men they KNOW are bad for them/destroying them/have nothing to offer them, and stable people do not have to run away every time there is a mild disagreement. Suddenly I have abused everyone in the family (I'd love for her to give some serious examples). As they see us getting stronger, they get intimidated, defensive and meaner.

Cedar, I have always had a fascination for how many low-esteem, abused too people run to be the caretaker in their parent's later years in an attempt to finally be the mother's hero. Even then, it rarely works. I have heard a lot about this in my group therapy sessions which I've been in since my thirties. Kids who were treated like garbage run to mom's side when she gets sick and the other siblings are happy to let her do it. ANd still...and still...Mom does not change her thinking about them. I remember One poor younger woman crying because her mother abused her to the last as she changed her mother's diapers and as her siblings, whom her mother favored, did not ever come by to give her respite from the role she had taken on. Maybe your sister is doing this as a last ditch attempt to be mommy's little girl. Of course, some caregivers were close to their mothers and not the scapegoats, but this strange dynamic...let's just say I've been in group therapy a long time and hear this over and over over again.It's common. I Thank God I was far enough along by the time my mom got sick that I stayed put and did not lift a hand, as she would not have for me. I could have been one of the poor souls being drained by a mother who will always love the other ones more or who abused them.

Many of the deepseated, almost unjustified perceived dislike between siblings is just old crap from the FOO's earliest days. I read that it is more common between siblings of the same sex. I think my sister was constantly trying to make mommy and daddy love her. In the end, mommy did in no small part due to her children who she bonded with. Without them, she probably would not have treated her much different than she treated me. But again these are theories. With my father she has gigantically failed to be the favorite. He really has no favorites and lately we have been talking about stuff I never dreamed he'd even care about and our relationship is getting closer. So she is one for one. She made mother love her more than me (which was actually not too hard) but she has failed with my father. Again, theories...our own, their own, never knowing, sometimes they never even know. But you have some very valid guesses and I'll bet you are at least partly right.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I can identify the fear of abuse as a memory that is not me.

Each of us is different, Copa. For me, I needed to go back to the incidents I could remember and cherish that little girl that I was as she was being hated and beaten and marked in that way by someone very big and powerful and scary.

I am still scared, when I really get present to some of what happened to me.

That is how scared I was, Copa. I need to protect that little girl I was taught to hate. In my imagination, I stand present during the assault, assuring her we do live, assuring her that I am her, that I will be there for her. Assuring her that I value her ~ that I know what happened, every bit of it, and that I am so happy she survived.

When we are little and our abusers are having at us Copa, we have no way of knowing we will live through it.

That is how many times we have met our own mortality face to face.

That is why we have and are so easily subject to PTSD, now.

Facing our own mortality sucks. Someone our own size could smack on us, call us names, hate us all day long and it would not have the effect of even one episode of victimization by a mentally ill adult.

I am sorry, Copa. That little girl? That was you, honey. And it was me.

And it's still going on somewhere today, right this minute, to some other little girl or some other little boy. (My mother actually hurt my brothers worse than she did either my sister or myself. Some of my most traumatic memories are standing there being able to do nothing. That is where I labeled myself coward. Now, I understand that simply witnessing, simply bearing witness, did sometimes stop the beatings.

I think I might also be beginning to understand that the reason I labeled myself coward may have been because I did not attack the abuser and make her dead.

That could be.

What a terrible thing for a little girl to know.

Bloodlust.

Matricide.

Ahem.

Okay, so now you guys know who I really am, deep inside where it matters.

And so do I.

But you know what? There was no one to help us. And if I had attacked her, I would be proud, because I would at least know that I tried.

Cedar