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

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
I am back, Ladies. We got through it. The documents got signed. We are home. And I am tired.

I am still feeling the aftereffects of "the post."
That unconditional love started petering off as she started ripping into MY character
Serenity, think about it. You are really all she had. And for some reason she had to destroy the relationship.
several very cool cities in Wisconsin I'd like to possibly move to and me and hubby are talking about it
I believe it is nice to have something in the future to look forward to...whether you do it or not.

It is sounding like you have so many good things going on where you are...it is a win...win. Either way.
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
I am tired. Still. The cat wakes me up every morning. M a few year ago, insisted all animals must vacate the bedroom and the bed. The cat and I remain desolate about this decree.

She waits until M is out of site or gone from the house and begins to hurl her weight against the door repetitively. So, I am awake with coffee. But will try to rest again.

I want to say a few things briefly.

As we were leaving for the train to depart...the attorney called as he prepared the last of the documents. On the advanced healthcare directive M is designated as the decision maker for me if I am unable. So the attorney wanted to know who would be it, if M for whatever reason was unable. Well, there's no one.

I got sad. Because I was forced to feel the solitary nature of my life. I could not run away from the reality that I had lived most of my life alone because I either feared or mistrusted intimacy with others. Not because of their deficits but because of my own. And this was a direct result of my life in my family. And I felt sad.

On the train I thought of something else. I scrawled: L (my sister) advocating for me. I do not remember what I meant. I will free associate now. My sister wanted to be the voice that defined me. To deprive me of a voice either to define myself or with my mother.

This recent incident here must have brought up and be bringing up all sorts of feelings about the lack of safety in my family and with my sister especially. Because it felt what that Modesta did was try to define me and what Admina did was fail to protect me and to turn it against me.

And it has all resulted in a feeling of a lack of safety for me.

COPA
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
The more I think about it, the more I feel what happened here deeply touched and repeated for me my situation as it was in my FOO.

I am me. Taking responsibility. Trying to do it better and to come from a higher road. Modesta is my sister. Always ready to seize an opening, an opportunity to define me, to put me down.

Admina is my Mother, blaming me and abandoning me. For causing her problems, by speaking out, by having a voice. So she targets me, instead of my sister (who she protects) or the rules of the family system.
You can't have a relationship with a threat hanging over your head.
So, now I feel this way.

I wrote you a PM. I am deeply hurt.

COPA
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
I think, to not listen to shame about whatever came next, about how someone else interpreted our intentions.
Yes.
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
Yes. Or else, the reaction (as opposed to response) would be based upon old shame-based feelings.

But the thing is this: Look at Donald Trump. Do you think he is reacting from shame??

Now, when I read even one word of the note I wrote Modesta (that I did not even remember) I feel such horrible shame for my anger...I cannot bear it.
I had to find a balance between what felt like arrogance in the way I'd been seeing him and the shame I felt
Was I arrogant on this board? Is that is what is revealed here? Or do I feel shame at the strength of my viewpoint and voice...as if it is a pretense and any pride in myself a sham and undeserved?
I had to create it, maybe.
OK. This make sense. I am tearing up here. I am not clear why. Is it what I wrote above, that I do not believe I deserve the pride of having a true voice? Or is it something else, that I had the momentarily wish and hope that the 3 of us together can create an alternate safer place...which will be both strong...and a risk... and hopeful...and I fear I do not deserve that? Or that there is not enough trust in me to hope something so nice...
It is usually nothing we have done because our people have forgiven many others for worst than we have done.
Yes. I agree.
I am convinced it is some childhood role game
Still, I do not know about the role stuff...but I could be convinced. I believe that my sister sets her sights on me with my name. Not my role.
I'm convinced she is furious at me because I set a boundary up where I refused to talk about him anymore
Yes.

Serenity, your sister sounds very, very trapped. She may feel like she is trying to work her way out of it...but she is very invested, I think, in staying inside.
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.
Yes.
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.
Yes.
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.)
But, the thing is I loved my mother. I loved the person who did this to me.
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.
Yes.

How sad for me and for each of us. I dampened my love that I could feel for her, as she lived, because she had proven herself so dangerous to me. And I could not back down from that...completely...And blamed myself for it after her death.
I get it that their stupid, wicked, evil behaviors have nothing to do with me
Yes. And no. Because here I have the incident of Admina and Modesta.
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.
This is really hard, when there is shame.
Plus, we will never get sucked in by those people whose guts we hate (in my sister's case) again.
And if we love them?
What we need to do is forgive ourselves for responding to the unbelievable things they do ~ or anyone does ~ from shame.
Hard to do.
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?
A person who needs and craves power.

Who needs to feel that she is the decider of worth..and that she can on a whim decide who or not is worthy of love and care. Or any other virtue.

I see your mother as doing this, too, Cedar.
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.
And this is an Aunt?
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.
OK. I will try.
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.
This is how I felt with Modesta.
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.
This is what I did with Admina. And then Modesta took over.

Thank you.
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
I want to share something of the events of yesterday.

The attorney who was my mother's attorney is this really menschy guy. He is the type of man who takes on all kinds of responsibilities in his community...in a powerful way. He is the managing partner of his firm. He can be scary. He is decisive. He takes control. His anger is towering. His clients are VIP's.

And with me? He hugs and kisses me. When we departed, he audibly made a kissing noise, as I left the office.

He calls himself my friend. And he takes the role of friendship. When I became so depressed after my mother's death, he would not let me be.

He volunteered to be the person, if M is not here, to decide for me in health care decisions if I am incapacitated. He volunteered to be a trustee for the special needs trust of my son...

The strangest thing is this. I can see he is a person worthy of respect. I can see that this person worthy of and commanding respect...respects me...and I can see that I must be a person worthy of respect and to be admired. This I know, because I have been admired and respected by good people....

But there is something in me that feels the imposter. Like I know I am a person worthy of respect because others do and have respected me...not because of what I feel myself to be. I deserve respect for what I know myself to be. Not what I feel myself to be.

But that inside of myself, I feel that the only way I can know it to be so...that I am a deserving person...is because others LIKE THE ATTORNEY respect me. Or like M...

But I am not like M. He does not need one other person in the world to respect him. He respects himself.

I only feel worthy of respect and love...by the reflection of somebody else. Not in myself.

And that makes me feel sad and bad.

COPA
 
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Copabanana

Well-Known Member
I want to point out one more thing with respect to the issue of Admina and Modesta and I.

The only way that I know that I was harmed, is if a witness supports me, as having been. I do not trust my own internal mechanism as being a valid gauge.

I feel completely out of whack in this regard. Both in terms of whether or not I have really been harmed...or whether I am deserving of care. Or even it seems, if my voice even when it is coming from strength and knowing...as I developed trust on this board...while posting...is a voice that I deserve to have.

That is extremely bad and wrong. And I do not know what to do about it. How to repair it.

What has been revealed here...is mistrust or lack of confidence in myself as a complete person. Voice. Deserving. Merit. Respect.

I know there must be somewhere a confidence...or I could not have acted as if I am worthy. But I do not know where all of this self-doubt is coming from.

Has it always been there? Or is this something I am doing to myself as a punishment, to take away strength and power? My crime?

COPA
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
But there is something in me that feels the imposter. Like I know I am a person worthy of respect because others do and have respected me...not because of what I feel myself to be. I deserve respect for what I know myself to be. Not what I feel myself to be.

I think that is where we are beginning to work now, Copa.

This is huge.

You are questioning that core of how you were taught to see yourself.

This is how I see what is happening to all of us as we heal: Almost without our conscious direction, we are presented with opportunities to heal, if we can sit with the feelings. There is nothing more we have to do. You are in contact with the core of woundedness, but you are not allowing yourself to protect yourself in the old, habitual ways.

You are allowing vulnerability. That's so huge, Copa.

Whose voice is talking?

Whose words are being used to describe the feeling of "imposter"?

Remember when I discovered the real messages underlying "That'll do, pig."

In the past, when we were confronted with feelings we did not understand, we created a role. That, to me, is where the feeling of imposter (for you) or of fraudulence (for me) comes from. Now, we are questioning the role. It isn't enough for us. We want to be real. We want to interact from the warmth at the heart of us, and not from the fear, from the certainty, that we are unworthy; that if people really knew us, they would condemn us as we were condemned when we were little girls ~ too little to understand how to come through the mother's intensity of emotion. It takes great courage...but living from a role is a lonely life. We were brought up knowing the core self had to be protected at all costs. Vulnerability, being real and open and trusting, is impossibly hard for us because we cannot yet trust ourselves; our self concepts are changing. We are like beautiful dragonflies, coming out of our newt stages.

Now, we are choosing vulnerability.

We have to. Otherwise, we go back to believing ourselves that ugly stage we were taught we always would be. But of course that isn't true. We are meant to mature into ourselves.

Each time we accept and we survive it, we are stronger, the next time.

We have to stand in the fire to come through it, but that's okay, Copa.

We are coming real.

The dragon rises from the mists and rolling fog of Not Knowing, aware that the journey has begun. It is time for the authentic self to emerge from confusion, seek its education, claim its heritage.

That is from The Artist's Way at Work.

I am pleased and proud for all of us. Sometimes, I cannot even believe we are able to do what we are so clearly doing.

It's hard, Copa. We have each come through terrible things, and those things hurt us deeply.

But we are coming awake, and that is an amazing thing.

You can do this. I like it that you know better than to believe those old negative tapes from the past. You are (me, too; Serenity, too) questioning their validity.

That's really scary.

But we know our moms were not healthy enough to do better for us than they did. We know now not to believe the things they taught us. What we don't know yet is what it is to be real. We think it must be some perfectly "right" mindset. It is instead, I think, a mindset of accepting vulnerability. We can take time. We can see how a thing evolves.

We can stick around for that, instead of believing successful interaction has anything to do with managing a situation so someone else will grant us acceptability.

That's scary.

Not because of them? But because of the things we tell ourselves about ourselves.

We are doing such good, good work together.

Cedar


 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
What has been revealed here...is mistrust or lack of confidence in myself as a complete person. Voice. Deserving. Merit. Respect.

I know there must be somewhere a confidence...or I could not have acted as if I am worthy. But I do not know where all of this self-doubt is coming from.

Has it always been there? Or is this something I am doing to myself as a punishment, to take away strength and power? My crime?

For me, criticism feels like global condemnation.

I have been looking at my shaming and blaming behaviors, this morning. I think our self doubt is how we do punish ourselves for daring to defy the negative mother within. We are punishing ourselves as she would have punished us for defying her.

I think what will happen as we heal is that, little by little, we will dismantle our unquestioning belief in the efficacy of the condemnatory mother within. Not that we will ever reach a place where those negative tapes do not play, so much as that we will reach a place where we know the taste and feel of them, and understand they are not useful in our current situation.

It's as though we are navigating a beautiful ship in full sail, having realized our navigation systems are faulty things.

We will have to navigate by the stars then, understanding it is our destiny to come safely into the harbor, into the home port, of our choosing.

Cedar
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
Whose words are being used to describe the feeling of "imposter"?
I use the word imposter, copying your use of it, Cedar.

I do not know what the word is for me...it may be because I did not yet have words to describe the gap between feelings and deeds, my own or those of others.

I do not feel accused as imposter. I feel as if the identity that I created all of my life was as if against, in defiance of how I was named, or treated by others.

But that primary identity, the feeling state of it, makes me unable to ever take as real or take in completely...any achievement....that my real identity is my mother buying me black and white striped slacks for my doctoral graduation...from what is thought by some as the best university in the world...that I achieved after she had robbed me.

So it must have been my mother who named me as undeserving. Even that which I earn of my own efforts and my own strengths.

This attorney was somebody like my mother would have wanted me to marry. Even when M was with me, my mother said to me...I wish you could be with somebody like him (the attorney.) Who was she denouncing as not good enough, me or M? Or the both of us.

The way I saw it at the time was that my mother was saying she would have wanted to attract a man like the attorney...and never did or could have.
We want to interact from the warmth at the heart of us, and not from the fear, from the certainty, that we are unworthy
But this makes me feel like you think Modista was right...that I have been acting as a role, not a person.

I do not want to think you think that, Cedar. About me.

There are so many questions: I am so self-effacing. Is that the act? I feel like "What's my line?" Will the real COPA please stand up.

I am now going to re-read your post, Cedar. There is so much there.

All I know is that I am a very, very afraid person. And I do not know of what.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Defying my mother brings up imageries of being kicked; brings up my little brother's eyes. This is the feel of emotional flashback, Copa.

It's a frightening, confusing place.

But you are very brave.

This is the journey. These feelings, I mean.

Risks are not only permissible, but mandatory.

For me, during this time, I am suspicious of anything that is not flexible. If I hear something that smacks of anger in my self talk, my choice has been to sift through for the shame base that, for me, will have everything to do with how I interpret myself.

Shame, and (for me today) blaming, especially, are coming up against who I am supposed to be. Up against a role in me, then.

So I am exploring this area. My navigation system turns out to be absolutely useless to me, too. So, by the stars or by anything I can find, I am savoring the journey, tasting the hurt of those old definitions of self and mostly, coming away clearer.

Mostly.

Cedar
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
Cedar, with respect to my reaction to Modista. I feel deep shame at my anger. I feel I showed too much.

I do not know if it is fear of punishment...of my mother...or if I took what was a meaningless thing...after all she cannot touch me...and it is everything about her...and took it personally.

For a combination of reasons. Because I have revealed so much here. Because I am vulnerable generally. Because I am vulnerable in this stage of my life.

Or because the dynamics so perfectly reflected something in my family, from the past.

Or because I am ready to deal with it now.
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
Cedar, something strange and scary is happening to me. I am navigating based upon the signals you are sharing with me *while I stay very close to M and my animals. I have come to trust you and Serenity very, very much.

Thank you.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
I do not feel accused as imposter. I feel as if the identity that I created all of my life was as if against, in defiance of how I was named, or treated by others.

Me, too.

It wasn't until I just first started risking saying "I don't know." I realized such a feeling of open, Copa. Like, it was okay not to know, not to be right, not to be defended. I didn't have to believe that internal voice that was condemning every smallest thing I did.

Everything, Copa. Even when I was alone, there was that condemnation, that internalized condemnation I learned to protect myself when I was a little girl.

It feels like, if I vary from continual watchfulness, something awful will happen.

But what happened instead is that I feel less lonely. And I realized I have been so lonely for all of my life because I haven't been here, in my life.

It is like coming awake, Copa. For me, it is. A tremulous feeling of honor and gratitude having to do with all the smallest everyday things.

And at first, I thought I was so lucky because I had it now and I had never known how good it was just to be here, before. But it turned out that was only a tiny beginning.

We have so much to look forward to.

It's hard for us to believe it. to believe this could be happening, to us and for us and that it was there in us, all along.

We have been alone for so long.

Cedar
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
Right now I am having a meltdown...and I am not alone with it. I am feeling I will never feel the freedom you are feeling, Cedar. Check the private messages please. I think we need to post here...not there. I feel there reinforces fear and shame.
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
Cedar, with respect to my reaction to Modista. I feel deep shame at my anger. I feel I showed too much.

Copa, is the shame response...is it something that is helping you? Or is it confusing you? Or is it hurting you. For me, I burn with the shame of the things I discover about myself, sometimes. But I realized that was a pattern for me, to do that.

I realized I do that to myself all the time, over everything.

There it is.

That heated, red in the face ugliness of myself.

Emotional flashback, Copa.

Whatever we do, that is the choice we make. Shame...that is something that is not relevant. Donald Trump does not feel shame because he trusts: fairness; strength; the possibility of failure; the possibility of success. The difference I think is that for me, failure means dead, rotting, swollen faced Cedar. Success means Cedar didn't die this time yet.

What would success around these issues feel like, Copa?

What would failure look like?

Given that we can create our own blog or conduct our affairs in any of a thousand other ways, what would each of those things look and feel like?

Once we know that, then we take the action we deem acceptable.

Again, think of Donald Trump. He rented a stadium for a political rally. Seating 40,000. What chutzpa. He got something like 29,000.

Success, or failure?

Or are these the actions of a man who does not allow someone else to define him.

That is where we are going.

No one else gets to define us.

Not even those old negative tapes.

We will be present, instead. Just, fully present to ourselves, and to our worlds.

Cedar
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
I feel that I tried to stand up for good. And that people accused me of being bad. And when I tried to speak up for myself, they kept telling me I was bad if I was strong. And to shut up.

And so I did.

And I felt very, very small and alone.

And very, very ashamed that I did not know how to be a good girl. Because nothing I did worked out so good.
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
So now I see that I am letting myself be defined by voices and events that really have nothing at all to do with who I am now. Whoever that may be.

And that is OK. Because in any second I have a right and the possibility to be whoever I want, be whatever I want and need to be.

That I do not have to have a certainty or knowing.

There is no confusion. There is only possibility.

I can always let go.

And direct my gaze, my intensity and my desire somewhere else...where ever I want it to go. And I can disconnect from THEM.

Because this is what I realize. I am staying connected to the events with Modesta and Admina for them. Not me. Because I feel they must need me to play what ever role they need others to play.

So I am doing this (weakness, self-blame, shame thing) to protect my mother and sister. And it has not a thing in the world to do with me.

COPA
 
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BusynMember

Well-Known Member
This attorney was somebody like my mother would have wanted me to marry. Even when M was with me, my mother said to me...I wish you could be with somebody like him (the attorney.) Who was she denouncing as not good enough, me or M? Or the both of us.
To me, knowing Jewish mothers, that was to him for not bringing home a fortune.

My mother used to tell me, "Jewish men make good husbands."

I can only believe she meant they are often financially secure because they cheat and get mean and can abuse just l like anyone else. One can brag about "my daughter who is married to a lawyer" and make it sounds like it is actually a compliment to her because she's the mother of the daughter of a husband lawyer and it is inferred then that you have money. And, strangely, all that flowed favorably to her. Just a guess. That's how I always took it.

I dated a carpenter once. You know they make good money, but they work with their hands. This was the first time I dated not only a non-Jewish man, but a blue collar worker. My mom did a real mock job on him. She wrinkled her nose as she said the word "carpenter."

Her: (as if she were me talking to somebody else about a man I was married to) My husband is a CARPTENER (wrinkled nose and mockery).

That's what she did. I don't know why. My own father did not make the kind of money some make in his profession and we hardly lived the life of the rich. And she usually would mock anyone who was materialistic too. The contradictions in t he childhood home were hard to sort out. By then though I was a middle teen (maybe 16) and already had decided that her standards were not mine. I did not care about Jewish. I did not care about money or if the guy had a college degree. I had already rejected those values as imperative, but she had not.

But, then, this is the woman who told me, "If you marry a gentile, he will beat you and call you dirty Jew every time you have a fight."

What is interesting is that she was thinking about many fights, which SHE had experienced, but that not all people do. And also she was responding to the anti-Jewish feeling amongst some gentiles during and post WWII. And perhaps my grandmother had told her that gentiles beat their wives too.

I didn't buy that either.

This begs the question: Did she dislike me because I obviously did not believe her w hen she made outrageous claims? That I didn't lockstep along with her? Usually I don't remember arguing with her about these things. I'd just think in my head that they weren't true. Little did s he know that her daughter would not only cross religious lines, but parent children of other races. And not ask if it was ok to do it. I just did it.

I think my mother wanted her opinion to be asked of my choices. In this way, I don't think she got that from any of us. With her low swlf-esteem, that must have made her feel small.But it's not l ike she parented us or anything. She pretty much didn't know or care what we did.

The House of Chaos.

Our House in the Middle of the Street.

No rules, no boundaries, no soft voices, no teaching, no guiding, nothing.

The house itself was as barren as the parenting. Not even a cheerful environment.

I got way off topic there. Copa, I guess I had one of them...er....emotional flashbacks (FLEAS) :)

I do not think your mother was taking a swipe at YOU this time, except to remind you that you had chosen somebody below her standards and below the standards she wanted for you.

My own mother would have gone ballistic over the hispanic thing too at one time. And the undocumented immigrant...I shudder to think of what her mean mouth would have done with that. It would have been like M. wasn't even a person. So if your mother was civl to M. she is three times the lady my mother would have been.

And if I had had more money than him, well, she would have said, he didn't love me, he wanted my money. That's my Mommie Dearest.

"NO WIRE HANGERS!"
 
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