In a totally new place and need perspective? Cedar? Anyone?

[BusynMember]

Copa, we will be here for you. You will not be alone.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

At midnight Friday morning we will travel 7 hours on the bus to see my mother's attorney and I will go back to the town where she lived. I know I will be OK.

You will, Copa. Everything will seem so different to you, now. Like always, we will be here. We will be thinking of you both, and waiting to hear about the traveling and all the things you will see and do.

I cannot wait to go cross country.I know that no matter how elegant and sophisticated are the ladies at Bridge Club or Mah Jongg or any other class in NYC, I will be gracious and warm. I am enough. I am my mother's daughter. And I am myself.

I love it that you wrote, "I am my mother's daughter. And I am myself." How wonderful a thing for you Copa, and for all of us too, as we come through it, to know you were able to claim the strength in her and recognize it in yourself.

My mom is strong and beautiful too. Once I am stronger, I will not feel that sense of distaste I have been feeling lately, for my own bloodline.

Thank you, Copa.

I had not realized that would happen.

Cedar, please tell D H thank you for caring about me. That I am out of bed. I am smiling as I write this.

I told him, Copa.

He said: "She is? Good for her!"

I look at myself in the mirror and I look younger. I look pretty again. I am having fun trying on my new clothes for M for him to help me with what to keep.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

We have many choices as to how to feel about those who treated us badly. I am not one to forgive. I know it's supposed to be for us, but it seems to be for them. I don't believe it is possible to forgive somebody who doesn't want it or think they did anything wrong. I'd rather just neutralize it...zap it's importance in my life. Forgiveness would make me too vulnerable to allowing them back in if they came back and, in my case, their is a long history of coming back. I can't afford to forgive. I am too softhearted and that, to me, would be absolving the person of all blame. I don't absolve myself of blame...why absolve somebody else?

It could be that our thoughts on what forgiveness is are changing. Before, to forgive meant we were wrong. A relationship, even with someone who mistreated or disrespected us...it's like we saw ourselves as responsible for what they had done to us. I agree that it is not possible to forgive the behaviors of someone determined to hurt us. I think that before, we saw another person's choice to hurt us as our fault somehow because that is what we were doing to ourselves, too.

Taking the blame for every unaccountable thing because we had been brought up to know, to know beyond thought or possibility of forgiveness, that we were the cause of our mother's behaviors toward us. We were unlovable, or our abilities to see what we saw or to hurt from it or to think any of what was happening to us through was terminally flawed.

We were raised to betray ourselves, not to hold faith with ourselves.

What a sad thing, for that to have happened, to us or to anyone.

I have a sense now of the precious event it is just to be here. To be alive in the moment I am in.

I feel sad for myself that I have lived my life without that feeling I feel now.

"I can't afford to forgive."

We held ourselves in such low value before, didn't we.

We could never see that we could not afford to forgive those who repeatedly hurt us. We could not even see that.

Here is a beautiful quote for us. It is from Charles Williams' Descent Into Hell.

"...and to lose its bravery perhaps hampers some other bravery of the spirit; to lose even one felicity is to have been robbed of more than we have a right to spare."

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

I love it that you wrote, "I am my mother's daughter. And I am myself." How wonderful a thing for you Copa, and for all of us too, as we come through it, to know you were able to claim the strength in her and recognize it in yourself.

Thank you, Cedar.

I have to go to physical therapy in a few minutes but want to comment upon this.

I will speak for myself. Because of my ambivalence about my mother, I believe I was unable for my whole life to draw on her strengths completely to inform my own being. Thus, I was a limited person.

I believe that each of us may have been robbed this way.

My mom is strong and beautiful too. Once I am stronger, I will not feel that sense of distaste I have been feeling lately, for my own bloodline.

But see, Cedar, I think we feel the disgust for ourselves that we borrow from them.

I am not sure how to think this through here (when I need to get dressed and leave) but there are several parts.

One, we are deprived of the complete positive identification.

Two, we take on the negative identification. What I am calling borrowing whether it be shame...disgust...

And I think when I wrote that last night...I am my mother's daughter you know I almost didn't leave it. I was kind of embarrassed to put it. But it felt somehow right.

It felt that I had become my mother's daughter in a way I cannot remember being EVER BEFORE (I hope I become a better house cleaner and more organized, too.)

Bye, COPA

Thank you for your support.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Yes.

You are onto something huge here, Copa. If we are not able to take pride in being our mother's daughters, then we must be incorporating why we cannot take pride in who we are in some way we cannot see yet.

Well, you are seeing it. Seeing and claiming the first glimmerings of it.

I am not there, yet.

I would like to be; would like to have that, for myself. There is a key, here. That key will have something to do too with my being ashamed of what happened to all of us, to me and to D H and the kids, instead of having been able to see, from the beginning, that these were the challenges for us, and that we would all come through it.

It connects to that dinner imagery of mine.

It connects to the Book Club and the china and the ballerina daughter.

I am ashamed sometimes, of the way I think about all of us. That shame piece affects everything, doesn't it.

That is very sad, how that changes everything about everything.

I will work on this aspect of how I interpret our stories, Copa and Serenity.

It is very true that ours is not an ugly story after all, but that ours is the story of a strong, loving family and how we came through impossible to believe things.

Not my mom and not my sister. They are still ugly parts of the story.

Okay.

Maybe my mom...I will have to think about what my mother has done. It could be that I will see her differently once I am further along in reclaiming myself.

Now, I am at a place where I can hardly believe she actually does the things she does.

I still have that head spinning feeling about so much of this.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Cedar and SWOT I wrote a PM.

COPA

 

[BusynMember]

You are onto something huge here, Copa. If we are not able to take pride in being our mother's daughters, then we must be incorporating why we cannot take pride in who we are in some way we cannot see yet.

I think it is great to be able to take pride in being our mother's daughters, if we can.

In my case, I don't feel like I was her daughter. Not that we had nothing in common, but she did not have too many traits I admired. The ones I did admire, such as her creativity, I had too, although in different ways than her. My identity has strangely not been closely tired to my FOO most of my life. Sure, I talked about them with my sister when we were not cut off. I wondered a lot about why...why she didn't like me. But I did not think of her as somebody I would be like and I wanted to copy. I never wanted to be like her.

When I thought my sister was stable, I did wish I was more like her. I don't now. I'm glad I'm me, apart from them.

I am not my mother's daughter. I would never do the horrible things to any of my kids that my mother did to me. I don't want to be my mother's daughter.

But I'm glad you two find redeeming factors in your own mothers.

 

[BusynMember]

I am going to check my messages now

 

[Copabanana]

I was unable for my whole life to draw on her strengths completely to inform my own being. Thus, I was a limited person.

Because typically the primary or principal person upon whom the daughter bases her identity is her mother.

So, in the case of my mother, who had numerous positive traits, I could not use them...to the extent a healthy daughter would...because of my ambivalence for her.

Then there is the negative. Because my mother was my principal female model, I also had to make sense of negative traits...like her sense of entitlement, for example.

So, is it surprising that I would suppress any sense of entitlement...as a way of negating that part of myself that was like her...and come to feel I deserve nothing at all?

She may or may not have taught me directly that I was undeserving. But I did not want to be like her....so I negated that part of myself.

I have written this as an example only. I am not sure these things ring true even for me.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

Yesterday the psychiatrist mentioned that the dosage I started on (10) was higher than the dosage he typically starts with (5) and said that the larger dosage when given initially can infrequently cause mania.

I hope my better mood is not mania. I mean, I don't care if it is mania. I just don't want it to go away.

 

[Copabanana]

Cedar, I was thinking about your mother.

I was wondering if she could not accept the love of the Greek Orthodox Priest because she either did not feel she was deserving or did not believe she could do it--could handle the intimacy of a real, loving relationship or was afraid. Think about how sad it was for her that she could not let herself have love.

Or could it have been she knew on some level she was so defended--because she is protecting something that she really fears in herself. It is one thing to let your children see it, or maybe a husband for whom you have contempt. But maybe she did feel vulnerable to the priest...whether love or need...and she knew she was too broken to go there. Or had shame to show him her core of sadism.

Whatever it is--think about the sadness of it. To be loved, and to say no to it. At the end of your life.

I mean I think I did that too many times, too. But I did not with M.

 

[Copabanana]

"I can't afford to forgive."

We held ourselves in such low value before, didn't we.

I do not understand this, Cedar.

I think we feel the disgust for ourselves that we borrow from them.

I am not understanding so good, what I wrote.

Did I mean that we carry their shame?

Or do I mean because we identified with them...of necessity...we feel the shame that is them in us?

Or something else?

 

[Copabanana]

I told M that my son called and summarized the call.

His response: I don't trust him.

Me What do you mean?

M Let's see.

Me You mean, he's being manipulative? Like setting me up for something?

M I don't know. Let's see. Take it for what it is. Don't go further than that. He has used our love and hope to his advantage. Let's wait and see.

 

[Copabanana]

Before, to forgive meant we were wrong. A relationship, even with someone who mistreated or disrespected us...it's like we saw ourselves as responsible for what they had done to us. I agree that it is not possible to forgive the behaviors of someone determined to hurt us. I think that before, we saw another person's choice to hurt us as our fault somehow because that is what we were doing to ourselves, too.

I am still struggling to understand this.

OK, if I forgive my mother for stealing our inheritance. I say I forgive you. On some level I must have thought I did not deserve more. So, to see I forgive you, is to accept that I am a being who does not deserve more. And that I could not do.

So, if I am a full person, and a person betrays me, I can forgive because it is not costing me my personhood. It does not diminish me. Is that it?

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Before we begin today's work, I want to share this definition of narcissism. It's the best I've heard: Narcissism: an unrequited love affair with oneself.

So, I could be a narcissist, then.

Well, okay. Once I feel better about myself? I could be a narcissist.

:O)

We all are everything to a degree, I suppose. As in the article Serenity posted for us regarding the difference between functional and dysfunctional families being a matter of degree of role flexibility versus role rigidity.

We all can be so many things; our abuser's will insist we are only one thing. As Serenity's sister insists Serenity is a thing, a label, and nothing more.

We can find our own places where we are inflexible by questioning the way we identify others in this way, too. (I am speaking of the way I was assuming my son to be. I was blind to that.)

I wonder if being shame-based is the same as not being able to honor the self, or if it's more like the self-hatred of the narcissist. I think I don't hate myself so much as that I cannot hold faith with myself without the comfort of a role.

It makes sense that this would happen to me, because there are so many ways that the way I was taught to see and behave would turn me into someone I don't want to be.

So, there would be a little feeling of fraud in there, then; in the assumption of the role, I mean. Knowing that little feeling of fraudulence was in there, we would become defensive and protective and desert the self even more, under challenge from someone who questions our motives, insisting that we are what they say through the ways that they treat us.

?

Without the role, we may not be kind; we need the parameters of the role to know how to not behave according to the rules of our dysfunctional families.

The comfort of a role can turn into: automaton. That automaton feeling is what we feel when we have betrayed the self through rising above the validity of the fear response (or some other response we refuse to acknowledge or give in to) to do the right thing as we see it.

That is why I am always tring to figure out what the right thing is, maybe.

This figures into Serenity's observation that we cannot require ourselves to forgive those who routinely hurt us.

We get all conflicted about what is the right thing when sometimes, the right thing is to honor our feelings and not do the right thing wholeheartedly, but to do it with caution, honoring and hearing the self and acknowledging we are scared to death. Like with me. I just kept telling myself I wasn't afraid of my mom (or my sister). So, I could not then acknowledge that they were hurting me. I set my own trap and locked myself into it and gave them the key.

We need to keep our own keys.

And use them to get the heck out, if we need to.

Maybe that is what we are learning, here: To hear, and to honor and recognize and cherish, our own real selves.

To accept ourselves without the role; without the perfection required of a role.

That makes sense.

Brene Brown has a new book: Rising Strong. Perhaps some of these issues will be clarified, there. One of the most helpful concepts I found through reading Brene's first book was: just have the feelings. The shaming feelings, or the anxious feelings, or the happy feelings, whatever the feelings are. That was in her first book. That concept. Just to remain present, and do nothing.

There is nothing we have to do; nothing we have to change to something better than it is. No one else is perfect, either. Our abusers taught us they were right. That is the essence of what they taught us: I am right. You are wrong. I can hurt you and I will still be right. So, we think we are defective somehow in not knowing, one thousand percent, how to respond. Or even, how to begin.

Maybe this is why we can be devastated by a poor review. We find it such a hard thing, to hold faith with ourselves enough to risk; enough to keep writing, in my case.

The truth is that no one feels perfectly respected or even, perfectly respectful, all the time. That is the crux of the hurt our abuser's left us with that we are having problems coming to grips with, today. We think everyone else knows what they're doing. We think no one else struggles to know the right thing the way we do.

But they do.

We all struggle to behave with integrity and kindness and generosity.

That is why tithing is comforting. It sets an acceptable limit we can go beyond if we like, or not. Enough people had to wonder about that very thing, for a rule to have been set up for it.

So, it will help us to remember that very important thing.

No one knows the right thing. We don't have to "know", either.

Our abusers were wrong.

Honoring the self means we accept the negative emotions too, the scary times too, and honor ourselves for our bravery in doing our best we know, however it turns out. What we have been doing is naming ourselves coward for being afraid, or fraudulent for being unsure of how to respond. Or, failure, when what we've done was something we all do, all the time. Made a mistake.

Those feelings are artifacts of abuse, and they make us marks to this day, for the predators in all of our lives.

I think that is what I mean when I say we must learn to hold ourselves with compassion. What I must mean when I say that is: compassion for our humanness.

We are human, too. We are living a mystery, all of us. No one knows the answer, not even scientists. That is how we learn. We make mistakes. Now, we know not to do that experiment in just that way. We need to not condemn ourselves for not being perfect.

Which is what the Bible teaches, of course.

And there it is too, in Eckhart Tolle's Power of Now.

And in the Buddhist: "When chopping onions, just chop onions."

And let the tears come; neither a good thing nor a bad thing, but a human thing. A defense mechanism to pain.

So, that is a part of how we are learning to care for and honor the self, too.

Recognizing, and accepting our defense mechanisms as the responses to pain that they are.

And honoring that we do that, instead of being ashamed.

I do not understand this, Cedar.

Serenity had written "We cannot afford to forgive".

I think what she meant was that we must learn to honor the self.

She was speaking, I think, in the sense that too easily excusing hurtful (or even, hate filled) repetitive behaviors turns into excusing the patterns of abusive relationship.

It's about the patterns we allow or recognize as abusive. We will have been brought up with high tolerance for exceedingly inappropriate behaviors. We will have been brought up to take responsibility and internalize blame.

We tend not to see abusive behaviors as abusive. We tend to forgive the other person's intent, and to blame ourselves for their shabby or destructive behaviors toward us.

We wonder what we did wrong, that they thought that way about us.

Just as Copa felt badly about her sister's visit with her new husband. Copa's intention was to honor; was to try again to establish the groundwork of relationship. Her sister's intention may have been, appears to have been, something else altogether. Requiring herself to keep doing the right thing, Copa then blamed herself for the way everything turned out, never once realizing that was the sister's intention, beginning to end.

Or, the times I feel badly whenever I see my sister, at all. D H could see it. (As I am sure Copa's sister's new husband could see too, that something wasn't kosher, here.) I could not allow myself to see it because if I did, I would have had to respond appropriately to what was really happening instead of to what I believed would happen if I just did the right thing long enough.

I don't know why they do that.

I do know it takes two people to do that.

We need to stop playing that game.

That is why Serenity said (I think) that we can't afford to forgive.

***

When the abuse becomes so top heavy even we can see it (as it does, say, when we are interacting with a predator we don't feel a sense of family obligation to), we are the ones who feel badly there, too. We blame ourselves for everything. We feel we should singlehandedly have been able to create non-hurtful relationships. The predator roars that we have hurt them; that the are so disappointed in us.

We try harder to be good.

We learned that in our dysfunctional families of origin. It feels wrong to question who they told us we were. What we are learning here in the FOO Chronicles is that there are people in the world who play blame and shame with everyone, us included.

It isn't just our families of origin.

They are like that with everyone because that is who they are but we don't see it. It has nothing to do with us, but we come away from these kinds of interactions feeling blamed and ashamed.

As was the predator's intention all along.

I don't know why.

***

Everything has to do with how we were taught to see ourselves.

We are learning to honor the self, now.

Forgiving those whose personalities require some version, not of rightness, but of righteousness, will prevent our honoring the self.

We are learning to honor ourselves and one another, all of us flexibly, beautifully human.

So, we cannot afford to forgive those whose intention is to beggar us.

***

Another thing I think Serenity was saying is that those we routinely forgive because that is just who they are (That is just my mom; that is just my sister.) are actively, and intentionally, abusing us.

And we need to see that, and name it what it is.

I think those things are what Serenity meant in posting that we cannot afford to forgive. However it happened in our families of origin, everything is out of balance. We were not given permission to honor the self, and that's messing up all kinds of things, for us. We need to keep clear heads as we come through this time, and we need to stay steady state, and to remember to honor the self.

That is the standard.

Honor ourselves, and honor for others, too. That is part of what happened in seeing the underlying mechanism in the way I was defining my relationship to my own son. And I am sure those kinds of undercurrents are whirling through my relationship to my daughter and grands, too.

And I feel badly about that, but am so grateful to have seen it.

Without honor there is no relationship, and we need to see the truth in that.

It has something to do with all of those concepts. I am not clear altogether on it. I know Serenity is correct in...okay, so it's like enmeshment. When we are able to honor the self, we will not become enmeshed, because we will honor ourselves instead of blaming ourselves. Honoring the self allows for mistakes, instead of perfection. If someone else behaves inappropriately and we feel ashamed because they thought so little of us as to have treated us that way, that is a circle of enmeshment.

The only way out is through honoring the self, is through honoring the other enough to expect ethical behavior from them too, and not excuse abuse. Which when you come down to it, is (abuse) about dishonoring, somehow. As our self concepts change, as we are healing, we have to be careful around that issue of honor for self and other. We need to see with clarity that, as our primary relationships have been abusive, so we don't find abusive people or predatory people unusual. They feel familiar. We recognize them, but trick ourselves into stifling the fear response. What is left is a kind of fatal attraction because we are afraid.

It's like we hypnotize ourselves.

We...I think we are figuring out the difference between forgiveness and being a door mat.

And that has to do with shame.

If we forgive and never think of it anymore and do not allow the mistreatment to continue, that is a good thing. But we don't do that. We are forever apologizing; we are forever taking the blame; we are forever convincing ourselves those bad things that happened were misunderstandings.

They aren't misunderstandings when the abuse is routine, and continues and even escalates, over time.

Like when Serenity's sister would call the police. Serenity felt badly for some outrageous action on the sister's part. We are forever wondering how we could have somehow done something so wrong that the other person believes whatever it is they insist on believing.

We don't even register the smaller abuses.

We don't even see them.

The abuser's intention is not to honor one another, but to twist relationship into honoring the abuser's sense of overwhelming personal righteousness. This is what we see in the eyes of every fanatic, whatever belief system it is they espouse.

That's why we have to be careful. Serenity will speak for herself here, but I think what she meant is that we were raised to believe righteous meant right.

So, we have to be careful around the issue of forgiveness. I have to be careful around the issue of vengeance, too. I am ashamed of myself for thinking bad things like that. I don't even know what to do about how angry I feel when I finally see the patterns play out; when I see the harm done and the ugliness in it.

I don't know what to do about that angryness I feel.

It is one thing to forgive because the person does not know what they are doing.

It is harming the self to forgive someone who is hurting us on purpose, in every interaction.

Or who is hurting our children; whose intent is to create victims of our children.

roar

***

We can spot a fanatic, a person addicted to that feeling of righteous, because they will be neither interested nor curious about how we see whatever the issue between us is. They already know; they count on us not to know. They count on us to be open, flexible, amenable to their viewpoint. The fanatic has an agenda. The fanatic is forever certain he or she is blessed, or has found some truth.

And however carefully they have chosen their truth, and however beautiful it may be, the person whose quest is self righteousness will brook no interference with their version of the wonderfulness of them and of their vision of themselves as proponents of their version of their vision; they are personally invested in the righteousness of their cause because, for them, whatever their cause is, that is what they are masquerading behind.

That is how we can know who they are.

Their righteousness.

Like my sister, walking with the Lord. Not humbly walking and learning like we all do, but justifying the legitimacy of righteousness through association with something beautiful, something strengthening.

It's a balancing act.

We need to be in balance, too.

Interacting with people like that, even if we do love them, is harmful to us because they don't really see us, at all.

Only they are real.

It's like Maya Angelou's advice, regarding betrayal and human nature: Believe them, the first time they tell you who they are.

We know, but we refuse to believe they are choosing, with intention, to create such a mess of things.

I don't know why they do that.

I do know that if we continue not to honor ourselves, we will be the ones eating the breakfast our abuser bought us, forever afraid to look up.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

In my case, I don't feel like I was her daughter.

I feel this way too, Serenity. I am more afraid of my mom than anything else, I think. I think that is true. I love her, but that is secret, because I think she would snort contemptuously to think that I love her.

That it would be a win for her somehow, and not a gift.

That I would not be someone whose regard, or lack of regard, could possibly matter to her. Here is an example. So, I was posting away this morning. D H came over, stepped into my space, and kissed me and said good morning or whatever and so on until I forgot what I was posting about. So, I was like, huh.

But I felt kind of sparkly, that he would do that. That the connection he has to me mattered to him.

I think my mother would have a sneer in her heart, if I were to presume, if I were to make plain that I wanted her to see me to make my day better.

Needing her has that same feeling to it.

Vulnerability.

Maybe, once I am not shame based anymore, I will be strong enough to honor myself for my own reality, and not let that be changed into something less than it is, through hers.

That would be a good, good thing.

And we are learning that here, so it seems to me we are on a right track, in our healing.

But I did not think of her as somebody I would be like and I wanted to copy. I never wanted to be like her.

I wished I could be right, like my mom. I wasn't getting that whole dysfunction happening when my mom was always so certain she was righter, smarter, kinder, more creative ~ more anything than anyone else.

I am beginning to unravel the why behind that, now.

So it makes sense that I will be able to come to a sense of compassion. Not like, oh you poor thing compassion, but just the acknowledgment beneath why she needed to feel that way. That there was nothing personal to me in it.

I was fixated, horror fixated, on not parenting like my mom had.

But I think, having found that I was not honoring my son for the man he is, that I must have some of that way of looking with contempt at people.

That's pretty embarrassing.

I don't want to be my mother's daughter.

Me, either. But then the question becomes...whose daughters are we? Are we choosing motherless or, like me, choosing other mother figures who aren't really our moms out of a sense of distaste for our own blood?

I have been feeling that way, lately. Once I really admitted how things are; once I see my mother's determined intent in creating what she did to all of us in the first place because she is still operating from the same set of precepts: exclusion, disparagement, ridicule, outright victimization for the designated carriers of those excluded so those who are not excluded (this time) continue to be invested in the game she insists on.

That's mean, what she does; what they do. Snake mean, and destructive and I never can figure out the value of the win in it.

Copa is onto something for us though I think, Serenity.

I just don't know how to claim that heritage with pride.

Surviving the hurtfulness of it; trying, however I messed it up, not to repeat what happened to me, and to all of us and what continues to this day ~ that I can claim pride in. Mostly, I feel really sad about how it all turned out for us.

Not at all proud.

Well, it would be a good thing for me, and for all of us, if we could feel pride in our bloodlines. Right now, I am not healed enough, maybe, to do that, to have that good thing for myself.

Right now? I just think my family of origin is like, snake mean.

It could be a mental illness of some kind; it could be that every one of us fought hard battles to do the good things we did do. Like those memories of Christmas. That shook me up, to know my mother loved me enough to buy me cowboys and horses, instead of baby dolls.

I think my mom was a baby doll kind of little girl.

And to think of the beauty of the Lippizanner stallions, and of the Tall Ships, and how she loves those beautiful things.

She brought red roses to daughter's first ballet performance.

So, maybe we need to have those good things in our minds about them too, as we go through our healing.

But it weakens me, to think like that. It makes the other things I know happened seem impossible.

Another benefit to searching through our belief systems about our moms is the answer to that question: Who is the fool, here.

My mother has lost so many good things that she believed herself to have been winning.

And that is all I know about that, this morning.

Because typically the primary or principal person upon whom the daughter bases her identity is her mother.

So, in the case of my mother, who had numerous positive traits, I could not use them...to the extent a healthy daughter would...because of my ambivalence for her.

Then there is the negative. Because my mother was my principal female model, I also had to make sense of negative traits...like her sense of entitlement, for example.

So, is it surprising that I would suppress any sense of entitlement...as a way of negating that part of myself that was like her...and come to feel I deserve nothing at all?

She may or may not have taught me directly that I was undeserving. But I did not want to be like her....so I negated that part of myself.

Yes. These observations are valid, Copa.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

I remember we were invited to my nieces' bat mitzvah. There were a series of events. It must have cost the father 75k or more. The first event was at the beach in Malibu. The second at a restaurant/nightclub. The third at the temple. So my sister had insisted that my 15 year old son needed a suit and tie. So, like an automaton I marched off to the menswear store and invested 300 plus dollars in a suit jacket, slacks, shirt, tie and shoes, to comply.

So, for the first event I insisted my son march to the beach in his suit and tie (with jacket and lovely leather shoes never to be used again).

Every other child was dressed appropriately (for the beach.) Every other child at every other subsequent event was dressed appropriately for a 12-15 year old child, i.e. no suit and tie. My son like any other rational person, divested himself of the jacket and tie instantly. He did not wear the clothes one other minute.

My mother commented to her boyfriend...S made Copa buy a suit and dress clothes for SON with money she does not have.

Only then, when my mother made this comment, did I allow myself to have a voice within my own head about any of this. Now if this is not compliant, automatic behavior, I do not know what is.

Narcissism: an unrequited love affair with oneself.

This quote has real, haunting beauty about it. Recalling Narcissus. There is a healthy narcissism. We all deserve some.

We can find our own places where we are inflexible by questioning the way we identify others in this way, too. (I am speaking of the way I was assuming my son to be. I was blind to that.)

Yes. For me it was everything that happened to me when my son became angry, hostile and troubled.

I think I don't hate myself so much as that I cannot hold faith with myself without the comfort of a role.

Good.

Knowing that little feeling of fraudulence was in there, we would become defensive and protective and desert the self even more, under challenge from someone who questions our motives, insisting that we are what they say through the ways that they treat us.

Like what happened with my son and me.

Without the role, we may not be kind; we need the parameters of the role to know how to not behave according to the rules of our dysfunctional families.

This is horrible to accept, but true.

Maybe this is why we can be devastated by a poor review. We find it such a hard thing, to hold faith with ourselves enough to risk; enough to keep writing, in my case.

So, I am thinking about the post. I am wondering if the proper thing for me is to begin to post publicly about what happened. Perhaps even in a new thread. Because it is important what I wrote to the administrator about taking responsibility to confront abuse. And it is important when somebody takes advantage of their role to take power over. It is important to identify when we tend to muzzle and blame ourselves when somebody treats us badly.

And my response to the administrator that I would stop posting except on FOO files and on my own threads. That was the wrong response.

They were wrong to support an abuser who wanted us to endorse abuse. She was mad because we did not. They supported her...against us.

That is what our parents did. When I tried to talk logic to them, I was blamed for speaking the truth.

I should not stop posting because it is unsafe here on the board. I should post about the lack of safety, make it public and try to make it better. For everybody. Nobody should be cowed on this board because they take responsibility.

To speak the truth about it is the only way to protect the community and to rid myself of my shame. I am afraid. Still.

What we have been doing is naming ourselves coward for being afraid, or fraudulent for being unsure of how to respond. Or, failure, when what we've done was something we all do, all the time. Made a mistake.

See, this is the position SWOT and I, and maybe Insane are in with that thread.

All three of us spoke from our hearts. I am not saying that I could not have done better. I am not saying that in retrospect it would have been better to focus my reply, not mentioning school or testing.

The moderators need to accept that defensive, pain, and the sense we are unfairly targeted, go with the territory. That those people who are responsible enough to go ahead and enter and engage with this pain and desperation...and help...like do SWOT and Insane. Because desperate parents will try "to kill the messenger." I know. I was one of them.

(As I am sure Copa's sister's new husband could see too, that something wasn't kosher, here.)

But in our case, he only fell more in line with my sister.

I could not allow myself to see it because if I did, I would have had to respond appropriately to what was really happening instead of to what I believed would happen if I just did the right thing long enough.

How sad for us.

The default is...if it is not working...we have not done it good enough or long enough...How sad for me with my mother at the end.

I do know it takes two people to do that.

But, Cedar, we played both parts.

They feel familiar. We recognize them, but trick ourselves into stifling the fear response. What is left is a kind of fatal attraction because we are afraid.

I have often wondered if this is why I chose the setting to work I did. Kind of like, what is the term they use? When somebody becomes Evil Knievel because they are afraid. In my case, I felt absolutely fearless. I mean like walking into lion's dens. And the hardest part, is that it unleashed contempt for me by some of the guards, who saw it as an alliance with their enemy.

I have not finished reading the post, Cedar. I will go back now.

I wanted to say two things. We changed the plan and will stay overnight at a motel tonight to not have to travel so crazily overnight through the day, for 36 hours without sleep. See how my mind does not work good, that I did not think about this until now? We will leave this afternoon, late, on the train, which we much prefer.

Second, is this: SWOT is the one person on this board that kept on trying to tell me that I had to clean up my thinking about my son. That I was putting to much responsibility for my issues onto him.

Eventually, I got there...but I had not put together...her prodding...with my eventual insights. Thank you, SWOT.

I stopped reading your post, above, Cedar, with the kiss. It was painful for me to read that you felt your mother would mock the tenderness and vulnerability of D H's and your feelings for each other.

With what I wrote last night, for my sadness for your Mom, do you not see how her wounds might lie under her cruelty. More and more it seems like somebody badly injured your mother. And she identified with that person, the aggressor. I am not forgiving her. Or the cruelty she perpetuates. I am wondering how I might be like her with my own son. I do not know. But M has long been concerned by how I have spoken to my son when I am angry or defensive.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I was wondering if she could not accept the love of the Greek Orthodox Priest because she either did not feel she was deserving or did not believe she could do it--could handle the intimacy of a real, loving relationship or was afraid. Think about how sad it was for her that she could not let herself have love.

I am not sure how to think about my mom now, Copa. What I think is that my mom and my sister are engaged in an increasingly toxic dance both are enjoying.

I don't think my mom is being victimized. I think she is happy there with my sister. I think she feels cherished and included and cared for and honored. I think my sister feels validated in the goodness of being a good daughter to her mom.

I think the cost of having that reality, for my mom, was to give up the man.

My sister seems to passionately hate the man, and to see him, to this day, as a threat to my sister finally having a mother. That is probably the dynamic at work behind much of what has happened in my family of origin since my father's death.

My sister finally has her mother.

My kindest interpretation of it is that my sister may believe my mother will be safest and happiest with sister's family than with that man, or any man.

That is the kindest interpretation.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Only then, when my mother made this comment, did I allow myself to have a voice within my own head about any of this. Now if this is not compliant, automatic behavior, I do not know what is.

It was honoring what your sister told you, Copa. The problem here is that sister lied.

You did nothing wrong.

Sister lied to you, and she did it with malice aforethought.

Wow, Copa. What a cool event to have attended. I wouldn't have had a clue what to wear, either.

Here's the thing. We can always dress down. Your behavior was correct.

You are not responsible for your sister lying to you.

I am sorry she did that.

It fits with her pattern though, Copa.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

But I felt kind of sparkly, that he would do that. That the connection he has to me mattered to him.

Now I remember, better.

How wonderful to mean something to somebody...that they need you. And feel safe with you. And you feel safe for him. Exposing your underbelly and your jugular. And nothing bad happens. Only sweetness. I am tearing up to write this. Because we never ever had this sweetness which is the best of life itself...as children.

I mean, do you not wonder at our pets who entrust their lives to us. Submit to all manner to completely unnaturally postures to us because of devotion and trust and need. And we could never do that, fully.

I think my mother would have a sneer in her heart, if I were to presume, if I were to make plain that I wanted her to see me to make my day better.

Oh, how sad. Such hatred and disrespect for herself. That she could not be that for anybody. And she knows it.

Needing her has that same feeling to it.

Degradation. Defense.

Me, either. But then the question becomes...whose daughters are we? Are we choosing motherless or, like me, choosing other mother figures who aren't really our moms out of a sense of distaste for our own blood?

See, the thing is I think we are deceiving ourselves if we think we can choose other mothers or deny our own. The proof of the pudding is in the eating. These are the mothers we ate. Like it or not. The toxic effects of the pudding are in us. Like it or not. It must be dealt with.

because she is still operating from the same set of precepts: exclusion, disparagement, ridicule, outright victimization for the designated carriers of those excluded so those who are not excluded (this time) continue to be invested in the game she insists on.

Identification with the aggressor. And so it continues, with your sister, who has fallen right into line.

And to think of the beauty of the Lippizanner stallions, and of the Tall Ships, and how she loves those beautiful things.

Imperial elegance. Style. Formality. All things associated with the elite and with conquest.

She brought red roses to daughter's first ballet performance.

How wonderful that she could do this. And how touching you remember.

I invited my mother and sister to my graduation, the PhD. From a very esteemed public university. It had taken me 10 years to complete. The last two or three, with my baby son. My mother's present to me was slacks and a t-shirt. At that time she had well over a million dollars. I will never forget it. Because the outfit was black and white.

My mother who was quite striking with silver hair, wore black and white beautifully. I have a more dusky complexion, with hazel eyes and when young, reddish hair. I wear autumn colors. I can barely wear most whites or blacks, and not at all the two colors together.

My Mother bought slacks and shirt for herself.