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

[Copabanana]

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.

You are right, Cedar. I will try to remember. I was so excited to buy those clothes for my son. So excited that my son would look so handsome in his beautiful clothes. I mean, I bought beautiful clothes. I did not just comply. It was so innocent. Like the picture of your and D H's kiss in the morning, coming together. My jugular was exposed.

And I did it to try to honor my sister. I mean, I thought it was a bit much, but I did it for her. So that she would not be embarrassed by us.

But the thing is I think she was always embarrassed by us. Because that was what she wanted. She set it up that way. Like your mother does, Cedar.

 

[Copabanana]

And we were at my sister's house when we dressed for the beach. And she designated as the appropriate attire...the suit.

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

Now, I must say, my son's style was in no way cramped...he just took off the offending attire. But did not take any of it personally.

And I also must add that I looked gorgeous. I had a stunning sleeveless lavender print silk dress for the temple. Not dressy. Just classic. And fantastically gorgeous high style high heeled black sandals. I was willowy thin. And for the night club, an animal print clingy knit dress, with a plunging nightgown (I mean neckline..too long in bed). And I danced the night away. My sister was obese. Good.

My sister set me up. She wanted me to go buy something that we would not have already. She wanted me to feel not good enough. That I did not have enough.

Neither one of us felt anything of the sort. In that we did not comply.

At that point we were expats, jet setters, international travelers. She did not touch us. Am I wrong to feel that way?

I have to stop with this posting...because I have to prepare for the train. Thank you Cedar and SWOT.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

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.

We don't have to be perfect, Copa. We get to be so absolutely human, with all the messiness of human and real.

There is no shame here, Copa. You behaved with integrity. It would be better, I think, to not listen to shame about whatever came next, about how someone else interpreted our intentions. For me, when I feel shame, I know I am feeling something that has its roots in old things, in things I no longer want to react to or from. I have to balance my way out of those feelings. I have to figure out how to heal through them, and how to see them for what they are.

I had to do that when I realized how I was seeing and treating my son so disrespectfully, not in my words, but in how I saw him, and in how the way I had come to see him affected the words I was choosing.

It was a hard thing to figure out.

I didn't want to go too far the other way, either.

So, I had to get to a place of compassion for myself before I could know how to communicate to my son from the place I wanted to be, instead of from a place I was not clear about, but knew pretty clearly was not okay with me. It was really hard. I had to find a balance between what felt like arrogance in the way I'd been seeing him and the shame I felt about that, and I couldn't find it.

I had to create it, maybe.

I felt arrogant, and I felt ashamed to have been arrogant and boy, it just went round and round.

So I just did my best I knew how to do, and apologized and son didn't know what I was talking about really, except he did.

So, that was pretty messy.

But I feel proud of myself for facing up to all of it without like, dumping my stuff on him or overdoing it or something. I don't know how to do balance yet. I think that is what I am saying. We have been through so many changes through our good work here but we are brand new to it. We need to be certain that we know what we mean and its hard to know how to put it all together for ourselves, let alone to express it correctly to someone else.

But if a sense of shame is anywhere in the picture Copa, maybe take a little more time?

I have to go work in the yard now, you two. The drain tiles are in, and we're finishing the rock work and path.

Maybe the path.

That rock work is harder than a person would think.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

There is no shame here, Copa. You behaved with integrity. It would be better, I think, to not listen to shame about whatever came next, about how someone else interpreted our intentions.

I agree.

Was I wrong to respond to say how I felt?

 

[BusynMember]

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.

It is usually nothing we have done because our people have forgiven many others for worst than we have done. I am convinced it is some childhood role game that still goes on in their heads and makes them blow up everything we do into a felony. I know my sister has put up with far worse from others than she ever put up with from me. Mine were stupid little things, some intentional because she hurt me and some totally ignorantly of her own value system, which I don't understand. Nothing I ever did tormented her the way abusive boyfriend does and has done for over five years. Nothing. I'm convinced she is furious at me because I set a boundary up where I refused to talk about him anymore since we were talking around in circles and he hurt her constantly and I could tell that she was not going to leave...and therefore talking about him would accomplish nothing. It would enable her to go to a bad man. One she said herself abuses her and is mean.She also had a friend who turned a bunch of friends against her RIGHT ON HER BELOVED FB! If I so much as posted a family joke that nobody understood, she'd yell at me, but this woman got her friends to turn on her for some teenagerish reason. She forgave her too. My sister is no brave hero. The only person she ever stands up to is me and it's in a dysfunctional way. Now I'm standing up to her and building a cement wall.

I don't think she believes I'm borderline either. She told me flat out, with her own mouth, that she didn't think I had borderline; that her boyfriend did. Suddenly I have it because she can no longer control me? Kind of makes me smile in a sad way.

Perhaps she thinks I read her threads and just puts down stuff to try to anger me. I haven't read her threads for a very long time and she doesn't have the power to hurt me, certainly by insisting I have a diagnosis nobody gave me but her.

I am glad she is suspended from her site though. Not because I care if she posts nonesene, but because she isn't trying to heal. She is just hoping I'll read her stuff and the mod caught on to her purpose. She will never heal. She doesn't know what she is healing from. I never had the power to make the entire family dysfunctional. The kid never does. And the family was a trainwreck since my earliest memories. Our mother caused her anorexia and other issues that are not to be named. A sibling doesn't cause anorexia. A negligent parent does. She needs to heal from our childhood too, but she insists on healing from me, and that just won't work.

I didn't CAUSE it and I can't CURE it and I can't CONTROL it. Like a drug addict, our FOO has to get healed in a professional setting, intensively, and open eyes to the pain of what our parents were. How they treated us. How our childhood affects us forevermore. How our mother could not give unconditional love at an age when we all needed it and because of that none of us learned that we were loveable. Not even golden child.

I wonder if GC ever told his therapist that his mother was a rather inept mother. He was so darn attached to her. I wonder if he can even face the fact of it. I wonder if my sister can face it too...she has such a need to think that our mother was good, and she may have treated her better as an adult, but there is not doubt that our mother was a horrible mother when we were children and young adults. Any denial of that is mindbloggling.

I didn't run the house. My dad was barely home. She was always there, yet s he wasn't. It was her responsibility to teach us to deal with life and she failed miserably.

Backing away from that topic and moving on to another really unusual fact in my FOO, on both sides, I just wanted to mention the men in my family. Is it maybe Jewish men being too babied by mothers? Am I just scapegoating Jewish mothers? Hard to say. But anyhow, here it goes and this is very unusual.

My uncle was tied to my grandmother's umbilical cord. HIS WORDS. He wanted to cut the cord, but he never did. He couldn't. It started when he was a little boy and continued into his manhood. He did not marry until she died and never had kids. That is good. He was way too selfish to have kids. Then there is my father's brother. He never married, he never lived with anyone, to my knowledge, he never had a relationship. When he passed on, his family found out he was a hoarder, like the people on the show. He lived with his things. And, of course, my brother has never had a live-in relationship with anybody in his life. At one time, brother was an actuary and made good bucks, but he also never bought his own house and has lived in the same exact rental apartment for thirty some years. He has not even shared his place with a pet.

I think it's interesting that the men in my family, on both sides, have trouble, just like the women, forming relationships. But they go even farther. They don't have them. I actually think uncle only married because he is afraid to be alone and needed a substitute for his mother.

All in all, there is a history of dysfunctional parenting in my family of origin. I do not know much about how my father's parents raised him and his siblings. I do know how my grandmother raised her kids and how my mother could not think for herself enough to cut her own cord and do a better job of parenting. I know she didn't like how she was parented and felt second place to my uncle, yet she wasn't smart enough to do things differently.

Oh, the thoughts that flow today

I hope you both had a wonderful day. I just came home from work.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

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.

I am new this too, Copa. But I think:

1) The inheritance. (MY MONEY THAT WAS MINE AND WAS TAKEN UNFAIRLY AND I WAS BETRAYED IN THIS.) The inheritance is gone. Whether we forgive or harbor ill will or whatever we do, the inheritance is freaking all gone.

2) I accuse the betrayer of being a betraying, deceitful, irresponsible skunk. I say these things in my loudest voice and in the worst, dirtiest, most disrespectful words I know. I swear I will hate my betrayer forever. Like yesterday, I decided to have vengeance on my sister because I hate her guts for what she did, right? And I have that vengeance thing going on, so I feel bad to think like that.

And I actually do.

3) Today, I forgive myself for those things I thought and said and posted. I see the rottenness of my sister, especially compared to me. I hate her guts again, and pledge I will do so forever.

I forgive myself for that, too.

The amazing person here is me. My sister, as it turns out, is a rotten jerk from whom I should never have expected better.

I forgive myself for hating her.

She's a jerky betrayer. Of course I disapprove of the little freak.

I forgive myself for saying true things about my sister.

4) The inheritance, my inheritance that was my own money, is still gone. But I forgive myself for hating the person who betrayed me. I am right to hate them, because they did betray me, those dirty rats. Roar! I could not hate them more for what they did to my money. (To my money. NOT TO ME.)

So I have all those feelings like vengeance and roaring, powerful, inescapable consequence for that stupid, ugly betrayer.

Then, I forgive myself for that, too.

And every time I feel mad for what my sister did, I hate her very guts. Right to the cellular level.

So, nothing's changed. My sister still did what she did. Your mom still did what she did. They were both dirty rats, to do what they undeniably did do. But you and I are clear on who was wrong, on exactly what those sick buggers did to us, and on how we feel about that.

Forgiven.

They did not do it to us. They did it because they are really bad examples of human people and they are lucky we have anything to do with them at all.

And we only do have anything to do with them because, even though we hate them (well, I do) I get it that their stupid, wicked, evil behaviors have nothing to do with me. They are ratike, rotten people; not good, decent people like me at all.

So I forgive myself for having such crummy relatives, who make me sick even to think about them. Those rotten, rotten bad people.

Which is true.

But me? I am forgiven.

Leave the bad feelings with the person who did the bad thing. There is nothing to forgive. To forgive them means we are okay with hurting us.

You are right. That doesn't make any sense.

To forgive ourselves for hating them for what they did ~ that makes complete sense.

Plus, we will never get sucked in by those people whose guts we hate (in my sister's case) again.

I forgive myself for being the kind of person who hates someone's guts. But they are a rat. They deserve it. They were lucky to have accidentally been in a position to know me, at all. And look what they did. Those rats.

Roar.

See?

Not mad at myself anymore, not coming from the automatic shame position anymore, because I forgive myself for hating them for what they undeniably did do.

Those dirty, dirty rats.

That was very wrong of your mother, to take your money, Copa.

Shame on her.

Not on you.

You are the guy who doesn't have your own money because some really bad person took it.

***

I am thinking that anytime we feel shame, we need to stop right there and figure out what we are ashamed about. You said it yourself, Copa: That means I accept that I deserve what they did. That is true; that is what it would mean, to forgive them. What we need to do is forgive ourselves for responding to the unbelievable things they do ~ or anyone does ~ from shame.

Think of it this way.

My sister took advantage of a niece who had brain damage. She did this so she could leave the niece blaming herself for having felt she was worth her aunt having cared about her. Who does that kind of thing?

But I felt dirtied by it. I felt bad for my child, and I felt badly for myself that my child had been hurt and that my own sister was a jerk.

That is the shame response. It went global. It went global for my daughter too, because if sister was not there to support her, to love her through it, then she was there like some sick weirdo lapping up blood at an accident scene and leaving it to someone else to call 911.

I may figure out how I want to respond to this, yet.

Shame froze me, like a deer in the headlights.

First, we need to get out from under the way everything looks when we see it from that shame response they hurt into us in the first place. My sister is a freaking rat. She always has been. That is why I had to go into denial about her. All I could know to do when someone was acting like a rat was be ashamed they were treating me that way.

Deer in the headlights.

Hating is wrong. Vengeance is wrong. I want to be good. And etc.

So, I need to stop doing that to myself. I hate my sister with my whole heart.

That is wrong, by my own sense of integrity, hatred got us into this and only love will get us out.

So I forgive myself for hating her the way I really, really do.

Who spends their own child's inheritance?

Not someone that child should live in shame for.

I think that's how this works. We are in a double bind because of that toxic shame core. We don't know yet how to understand the terrible things that happen, not just to us, but to everyone sometimes. We default to toxic shame.

Those raised in healthier environments will default to something else, when bad things happen.

That default position is the place we need to work.

Toxic shame.

In a way we are fortunate in this. We know what it feels like. We know then, that we have work to do around this issue, whatever it is, when we feel toxic shame. That is not a signal to buckle. Not anymore. That is us, that shame, sending signals that we are ready, that we are strong enough now, to heal it.

The person who did whatever is not the issue. My mom is a jerk in many ways. My sister is a jerk in pretty much every way.

How unattractive, to think like that.

I forgive myself.

I choose myself.

If there is anyone who is going to be hated for what they did, it's them.

Not me.

I am forgiven.

So are you. Not for what your mother did. You do not have the right to forgive her Copa, any more than I have the right to forgive the male who beat daughter.

But I am not going to pop myself into toxic shame for that bugger's sake. Or for my sister or my mom or even, for the things I do that are wrong.

No more toxic shame default, for any of us here on FOO Chronicles.

I don't know what I am going to do, about these people I (roar) feel so angry with.

But I am good and mad.

That's okay.

I forgive myself for that.

I absolutely do.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Was I wrong to respond to say how I felt?

Of course not.

We are healed enough now to recognize the taste of shame for what it is. There is nothing to feel shame for in taking or defending a position.

So...what's it doing there? Something else is being keyed by this situation.

What is it.

When you know, then you will be clear as a bell on how to proceed with the other.

I think that is how I am looking at things for myself, in this phase of our healing.

Shame is old business looking to be healed. I will hold myself of primary importance. I will clear the shame and then, attend to whatever response is required in the situation that keyed toxic shame.

That shame should not be there.

There is nothing to be ashamed about. Facts are facts.

Shame has no valid place, here.

What is it telling you, what is being keyed, what can be healed.

Easy for me to say, I know. But that is what I am trying to do with my sense of shame, too. It's like we beat ourselves into it over everything.

We need new default positions.

Shame is not healthy for us, for our kids, for our lovers or friends or anyone.

Shame is hurtful.

It hurts, alot.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Just skimmed your last two posts, Cedar. But wanted to comment upon two things.

First, the parallels between your sister and mother and my own. My sister must have made a similar bargain with my mother. My sister must have stayed in relationship with my mother contingent upon having what she felt to be the upper hand vis a vis me. She could take what she wanted of my mothers things (and money) and feel like the prize specimen. Like she was the daughter. (Remember my sister's 2nd mother in law referred to my mother as my sister's mother, and got embarrassed when she realized it.)

And I was okay with it all, more or less, because I wanted to be out of it.

But then everything started to fall apart when my mother got vulnerable, and my sister moved in. Then the dynamic changed. Because the deal was my sister had special rights and privileges.

And I broke the implicit, unspoken deal...to let her. And that was when my sister broke the relationship with my mother.

So, there must have been tacit agreement on my mother's end.

It still hurts me that nobody ever invited me to anything, except an occasional Christmas or Thanksgiving. Sometimes, my mother was excluded, too, and she felt very mad and abandoned. But nobody ever considered how I felt. Hardly ever, even me.

I do not have time now, but I want to mention here again the events around the post. And shame. And shaming. And the strength of my reaction and then my response.

Got to go now. Take care SWOT and CEDAR.

COPA

 

[BusynMember]

Hi? Can you see me??

 

[Copabanana]

Hi? Can you see me??

NO. I am confused.

 

[BusynMember]

Nobody answered. I wondered if my posts were visible. Thats all.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

It is usually nothing we have done because our people have forgiven many others for worst than we have done.

Serenity, I don't think it ever has one thing to do with what we have done. Unless I'm totally delusional, I was as good a sister, as willing and non-judgmental and supportive a sister, as I knew how to be. This was a choice on my part; I mean, I worked at it. I thought about it. I remained loyal whatever she did and she pulled some doozies.

I wouldn't even let my mom talk badly about her. Not that anyone could stop my mother, but I never encouraged her.

So I think it is not something we did, Serenity. I was afraid my sister would come to my house with her husband and my mother and I would feel terrible, remember that? That was in June of this year!

Then I was afraid of the phone call.

But by the time it came, I was better enough to handle it well. And it wasn't even scary.

Huh.

I feel so differently now, feel so much more at home in my own home, at home with and proud of and happy with, my own D H, than I have since they started this smear campaign on us, on our stuff, on our own children and boy, I could spit about that one. The thing is, I didn't know what families were supposed to do, how they could be supportive of all of us ~ not just D H and I, but the kids, too.

I just didn't know.

Now I do. Well, I at least I know, like I always do, what families do not do.

It was never anything you did, Serenity. It was not who you were. It is, and it has always been, who sister is.

She doesn't even know you, Serenity.

She doesn't even know who you are. She is vested in you being who she needs you to be for her to feel better about herself.

Now, we know.

I am convinced it is some childhood role game that still goes on in their heads and makes them blow up everything we do into a felony.

I think you will find that they blow up what you feel ashamed about ~ a time you feel your behavior was not up to your standards, into felonies. That is why, when we try to figure it out about how that was the reason this or that happened, the reaction doesn't make sense for the supposed crime.

They just want the reaction.

You could have done anything, anything at all, and the result would have been the same. She always intended to do just what she did, just the way she did it.

I think that is true.

If we were not so shame based, we never would have fallen for any of it right from the beginning. Add the mother wound; add, as Copa teaches us, the younger sister identifying with the abuser.

Add pseudo mom, and the whole, sorry mess that is.

That's who they "think" if they think at all, that's who they think we are.

And they are so angry Serenity because I think they know we are not what they say. They go all ballistic, and start naming us scientific names they don't even know the meaning of, but the meaner, the better.

And you know what you did, in your kindness and confusion and from that shame your mom hurt into you? You said, "Oh, no. How sad for me! I will do better.

And you did.

But you were never what she insisted you were.

You never were, Serenity.

So sister brought in a witness. You don't know that he ever said that.

Sister was wrong.

And I think that, like my sister, she knew it.

That's why my sister has to walk with the Lord. Everybody else gets it that she's full of it. Except for me. But now, I get it, too.

I'm convinced she is furious at me because I set a boundary up

I think so, too. I am glad you did that, Serenity.

The remainder of your post was about extended family and the strangenesses there. And that has to be true, of course. Our families are working things out as best they can. For this time, when I am still so new to seeing and assigning responsibility to the person for what they undeniably did do, I don't want to understand them.

I want to blame them for what they did.

I do.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Hi? Can you see me??

I was working in the yard. Now I am covered with sand. But the drain tiles are covered and I made a nice landing from patio blocks and we hosed everything off and it looks very nice. We still have all sorts of tools and things to bring up to the garage. I will go and help D H with that in a minute here, once I catch up with you two.

I am really mad about my family today.

Please excuse that, in my posts.

I will be nice again, tomorrow.

:O)

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

I'm sorry, Cedar. Please try to have a good evening.

 

[BusynMember]

It is, and it has always been, who sister is.

I'm not going to say I made no mistakes, Cedar (whenever you read this). We have a high strung family. I show it. Sister is just as bad, but passive aggressive. So we weren't always as kind as we should have been. But at the beginning, before she started calling the cops, I loved her desperatelly and tried to help her in any way I could. And I did help her. And I would have kept it up if she had not changed toward me.

With all the stuff I was dealing with, I did the best I could. I loved her. Unconditionally. Even when she did things I could never have done.

That unconditional love started petering off as she started ripping into MY character...the intense love gradually started to lower as I had other peeps who really did care about me...I knew the cut offs were not normal. The cops were not normal. She was not normal. Was I? No...lol. None of us where, growing up as we did and with our DNA. But I tried harder than she did and now I don't want to try anymore.

Thank you for your confidence in me. I did mean well. I would have forgiven her every time on a dime, and I did, until the last time. I'd had it by then and I'd, sadly, seen her real self too...we do not have the same morals or values. Not saying mine are better than hers, only that ours are different. What she thinks is ok is very not ok to me and possibly vice versa. I'm sure she feels I'm a horrible prude (shrug).

We're better apart...forever. I know her well too. This will not be an easy walk for her to take either. She will miss me and I won't miss her anymore because I fear her. But she always misses me. So this last cut off will be a journey that may not be that easy.

But we both must and will do this.

I'm done for good with cut offs, cops, and her. I have different peeps now.

 

[BusynMember]

I wouldn't even let my mom talk badly about her. Not that anyone could stop my mother, but I never encouraged her.

My mom would give her what I call back handed compliments. Once, during one of my phone calls to make her like me near the end, she said, "XXX is such a good mother. I never thought she would be. I'm really surprised."

I said, "Why are you surprised?"

That kind of thing. Sticking up for her, even when we weren't talking sometimes. I don't really know if Sis was a good mother or not, but I wasn't going to let mother act surprised that she thought she was and voice it to me. I found that an insult, really.

Mother never took one swipe at GC, but she would make comments indicating being unsure of Sis's competence from time to time. If we were having a good conversation she seemed to open up more and almost forget who I was and then she'd sometimes confide her feelings in me...lol.

 

[BusynMember]

She doesn't even know you, Serenity.

She doesn't. I am quite strong, having gone through I have and have changed A LOT. That is what gave me to courage to set a boundary with her about not talking to her any more about her abusive boyfriend.

Boy, did that tick her off. But that wasn't my intention. Again, she took it wrong.

 

[BusynMember]

They just want the reaction.

Correct. So correct. Cedar, I applaud you for saying this. It's so true.

It is why we must not give them an audience.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

It does seem that way.

In that sense, it is as though the sisters are obsessed with us in unhealthy ways, just as you suggested in your post on obsession.

In the end, those behaviors our sisters engage in must have to do with how they learned to cope with the trauma of what happened to all of us.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

Well, what kind of creeps me out is that mine can not stop thinking about me. Truly, I rarely have her on my mind anymore, except "Yes, this happened once..." but not as a trauma. I know she can't hurt me if I don't let her talk to me or contact me so I don't need to worry about her. A good deal of the time, when I did talk to her, in the back of my mind, I'd think, "I wonder what trivial thing will set her off THIS time so she calls my cop friend." You can't have a relationship with a threat hanging over your head. I am safe now because as long as I don't talk to her, she can't call the cops. Plus I moved and will move again and in time she won't know where I live and we have no landlines for her to contact me that way. After my dad finally passes away (tears at the thought), then I think all of us will change our cell phone numbers. Thank God there is no way to find out somebody's cell number yet.

There are several very cool cities in Wisconsin I'd like to possibly move to and me and hubby are talking about it. We most likely will not stay here. Moving back to Illinois is not an option. I do like many surrounding areas of St. Louis, but that's not going to happen either...I don't think. Never know though and neither will anyone else.