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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 657278" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>I think it is part of the isolation thing, and of the grandiosity thing. It is when we stand up, or when they find allies in one another, that these kinds of isolationism happen. I think they are not scared. I think they are taking their power to define us back. <em>Whether a thing is true or not does not seem to be something that matters to abusive people. They can stretch or condense or change what seems true to everyone else and not blink an eye.</em></p><p></p><p>The longer my sister and my mother were together, and the less frequently there was contact to validate what was true about me or D H or them, the stranger and more certain their rationalizations for what they were doing, for who they were, became.</p><p></p><p>I told my sister that when I told her that I did not want to be in relation with either she or my mother because I refused to be who they insisted I was, in order to have relationship with them.</p><p></p><p>I did not know then how accurate my assessment was.</p><p></p><p>Snip.</p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/Graemlins/9-07tears.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":9-07tears:" title="crying :9-07tears:" data-shortname=":9-07tears:" /></p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>It could be that without an enemy, they cannot unite.</p><p></p><p>Human nature is like that. They say that if alien beings descended on the Earth, every Earthling, every human being, would feel strongly united against them despite our current, seemingly unresolvable differences, now.</p><p></p><p>If you think back on it, you can (I can, anyway) feel those currents shifting around, feel the lie between my mother's teeth while she did that to someone else. When she did it to me, and she did, right to my face, I was defenseless of course. I could not see the wrongness in it, as my mother's shifting assessments applied to me.</p><p></p><p>Grandiosity is something my mother reflected to me. It was the other side of hatred, or was its close cousin, or something.</p><p></p><p>There is something here about how this thing was accomplished. Something about being overpraised for unimportant things and destroyed for the valuable ones.</p><p></p><p>That happened to me, and maybe to all of us, too.</p><p></p><p>Like a really messed up value system about what was real. That is why I felt I was doing something valueless when I wrote, maybe. Something of real value, something I am so curious and enamored of and passionately happy doing, but I put it away, believing that was the thing, that pleasurable thing, is what happened to the family D H and I had created. </p><p></p><p>I don't have this part yet.</p><p></p><p>Maya took herself and her writing seriously, too.</p><p></p><p>And until she did that, there was no Maya Angelou.</p><p></p><p>Here is a story: So, my mother and I are at WalMart. And we each have a cart, and are shopping separately with an agreement to meet at a certain place at a certain time, check out, and go. So, my mother comes up to me, smiling and smiling, <em>and asks whether I've noticed all the men noticing me.</em> <em>I was sixty years old. There is no possible way men were noticing me.</em> Unless they had a mother fetish. Or a grandmother fetish.</p><p></p><p>So, I was a little uncomfortable with it, but just laughed it off, right? And my mother just would not let it go. It was disturbing enough to me that I am relating the story here, but I don't know what it was that was so disturbing about it.</p><p></p><p>Stuff like that. Grandiosity, or the offer of grandiosity that is really a lie.</p><p></p><p>My mother told me this story: My sister, so happy that my parents were visiting her home that she was dancing, like a ballerina, around the kitchen for them.</p><p></p><p>My sister would have been in her mid-fifties, then.</p><p></p><p>And there was just something so wrong about her having told me that. If it were true, or it if were not true.</p><p></p><p>I felt badly for my sister. I did not tell that to my mother. I don't think I knew what to say. But if that really happened? What a strange and somehow dysfunctional thing.</p><p></p><p>But when I was talking to my sister, she seemed okay with having my mom there. I mean, there were things that were very hard because after all, it is my mother we are talking about, here.</p><p></p><p>Hard to know who to protect from what. Or whether anyone needs protecting from anyone, and I am trying to squeeze out a role, a place for myself, through that role of protector.</p><p></p><p>But I do know my mother.</p><p></p><p>Now, I do.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Maybe because they knew darn well that if your mother were not talking about you that way to them?</p><p></p><p>She would have been talking about them that way, to you.</p><p></p><p>That is how it works in dysfunctional families. The primary abuser, it seems to me, will cut anyone's throat but her own to keep the family weak; to keep us isolated from one another's strength, and from the true things each of us knows and cannot face, alone.</p><p></p><p>My mother has tried to come between my sister and her daughters, and between my sister and her husband. I would say too that she has. My mother sucks all the air out of the room, and a marriage ~ especially a recent one, cannot be the same thing it might have been.</p><p></p><p>Unless I am wrong about what I think I see, there.</p><p></p><p>But I think I am not wrong.</p><p></p><p>Those same things happened to me.</p><p></p><p>But I am married to D H.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That is all they know to do. </p><p></p><p>One of them, probably the sister, is the instigator, is the one whose own sense of self is tied into recovering or maintaining (or something) the value system set up by the mother.</p><p></p><p>Why doesn't matter.</p><p></p><p>Radical acceptance.</p><p></p><p>No compassion for them, not yet.</p><p></p><p>That is what we are reaching for I think, when we try to understand the why behind things like this. But we are trying to understand mindsets alien to our own. So it can never make sense. Things don't fit. There are no logical conclusions, or any kinds of conclusions, that hold water for us as we are trying to figure out the broken place and fix it.</p><p></p><p>Why doesn't matter, SWOT.</p><p></p><p>That confusion you feel surrounding these issues has nothing to do with you. Unless our sibs commit to their own healing instead of taking what comfort is available in believing what they have to know, on some level, are lies, they will never be people we can trust. So here is the question: Without trust, real relationship is impossible.</p><p></p><p>So, what are we doing, trying to figure out where our sisters and brothers are strong enough to trust both us and themselves?</p><p></p><p>We can't help them with that, anymore than we can believe our kids well and happy.</p><p></p><p>We can only try to see the patterns, and figure out what we can about that for our own sakes.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Your genetic mix must be a little different than hers.</p><p></p><p>I don't exactly understand it, but I do love, and I am proud for, the things my sister has accomplished. I get it now though, that she feels differently about me than I think I do feel about her.</p><p></p><p>Radical acceptance.</p><p></p><p>I think my sister actually feels deep hatred for me. Or maybe, together with my mother she does. Or maybe, she always did.</p><p></p><p>Probably that is true, looking back.</p><p></p><p>It could be that in my FOO, because I took on so many of the mothering roles, hatred that cannot be funneled to my mother is funneled at me?</p><p></p><p>I don't know.</p><p></p><p>No compassion. Not today.</p><p></p><p>Not yet.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think the win for them is the satisfaction of isolating us. Or maybe, there is a position of strength in that. I feel like it is wrong in so many ways not to ~ to have turned away from my family of origin as I have. But it feels good to have a place to stand, instead of always trying to figure out the ~ I don't know. How to stand up for them instead of labeling them wrong or bad or something. We have all been hurt so much, already. I don't want to add to that. But maybe I never had the power to do that. Maybe they have been playing and playing me, all along.</p><p></p><p>That would explain why they could hurt me once we had been made vulnerable over what happened, over the way I fell apart inside, when my kids were in so much trouble.</p><p></p><p>They had probably been doing it all along.</p><p></p><p>But when I was all fallen apart, I believed them.</p><p></p><p>?</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I have a FB response from my sister that is still there. Sometimes, I go back to review it, just to be sure I saw what I thought I saw. It's unbelievable proof, right there in black and white. It was the post having to do with her purposeful exclusion of my brother.</p><p></p><p>I feel happy to have that to go back to.</p><p></p><p>I might never believe it happened in just that way that it did, without that post.</p><p></p><p>So, don't delete it.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yes she did. She had a right and an obligation to defend you. It was a lack of character that held her back. We will not condemn her for that, though. We know where she has been, and we know how that happened, and I think we know that she loves you enough that if she could have been strong enough, for both you and herself, she would have spoken up to her mother.</p><p></p><p>Or maybe I am way wrong, and my sister and yours too, are more like our mothers than like us.</p><p></p><p>That could be true.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yes he was. That is your brother. He has a right and an obligation to defend his sister. I remember reading a post of Jabber's once. He said that very thing, about his own sisters.</p><p></p><p>I have never forgotten that.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Maybe, she always did have this unhealthy kind of obsession with you. My sister has a picture of the two of us, of she and I, in her bathroom, where she can see it every day.</p><p></p><p>?</p><p></p><p>She showed it to me, pointed it out when we were touring her new house.</p><p></p><p>I have lots of pictures of my sister, and of my sister and me. But they are just scattered around here and there with other family pictures.</p><p></p><p>When my sister took her first painting class, she brought the picture she'd painted to me. From far away, in that other state where she lives, she brought it to me. She said it wasn't a very good picture, but she wanted to know I had it.</p><p></p><p>So, I do.</p><p></p><p>?</p><p></p><p>No compassion. Not today.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>My sister no longer has rights of access to me. In my heart, I mean. Not since stalking my daughter and hurting her when she was so off the wall vulnerable and a relationship, some supportive something from her aunt would have meant so much to her. It is one thing not to be involved. It is another to exploit a vulnerability for a win I still cannot figure out.</p><p></p><p>I sound like a dork. I get that. I told my brother he has access to me, anytime. I get it that this is a dorky thing to say, too. </p><p></p><p>I do have that geek thing going on.</p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I love this.</p><p></p><p>True.</p><p></p><p>We can work through it, here. We can understand it enough to gather everything together and present it in a way that makes enough sense that someone else can make sense of it, too. That is what helps us, I think. Not so much the responses we make to one another, but the gathering of information in a coherent package that <em>we</em> can make sense of, and can trace patterns of behavior through so we can see what is real.</p><p></p><p>Okay. Thank you both for staying with me through this. You matter, and you are helping me be stronger.</p><p></p><p>It does hurt, to think I have been played for a fool and trusted the very people who were doing that to me. I mean, I sort of knew that all along, but it was okay, somehow. It was meant to stand up, and to stand up together, one day.</p><p></p><p>Cheesh.</p><p></p><p>But not to my child, you don't.</p><p></p><p>I see you.</p><p></p><p><em>I see you back.</em></p><p></p><p>Cedar</p><p></p><p>So. I am feeling pretty much like a poop where my sister is concerned.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 657278, member: 17461"] I think it is part of the isolation thing, and of the grandiosity thing. It is when we stand up, or when they find allies in one another, that these kinds of isolationism happen. I think they are not scared. I think they are taking their power to define us back. [I]Whether a thing is true or not does not seem to be something that matters to abusive people. They can stretch or condense or change what seems true to everyone else and not blink an eye.[/I] The longer my sister and my mother were together, and the less frequently there was contact to validate what was true about me or D H or them, the stranger and more certain their rationalizations for what they were doing, for who they were, became. I told my sister that when I told her that I did not want to be in relation with either she or my mother because I refused to be who they insisted I was, in order to have relationship with them. I did not know then how accurate my assessment was. Snip. :9-07tears: *** It could be that without an enemy, they cannot unite. Human nature is like that. They say that if alien beings descended on the Earth, every Earthling, every human being, would feel strongly united against them despite our current, seemingly unresolvable differences, now. If you think back on it, you can (I can, anyway) feel those currents shifting around, feel the lie between my mother's teeth while she did that to someone else. When she did it to me, and she did, right to my face, I was defenseless of course. I could not see the wrongness in it, as my mother's shifting assessments applied to me. Grandiosity is something my mother reflected to me. It was the other side of hatred, or was its close cousin, or something. There is something here about how this thing was accomplished. Something about being overpraised for unimportant things and destroyed for the valuable ones. That happened to me, and maybe to all of us, too. Like a really messed up value system about what was real. That is why I felt I was doing something valueless when I wrote, maybe. Something of real value, something I am so curious and enamored of and passionately happy doing, but I put it away, believing that was the thing, that pleasurable thing, is what happened to the family D H and I had created. I don't have this part yet. Maya took herself and her writing seriously, too. And until she did that, there was no Maya Angelou. Here is a story: So, my mother and I are at WalMart. And we each have a cart, and are shopping separately with an agreement to meet at a certain place at a certain time, check out, and go. So, my mother comes up to me, smiling and smiling, [I]and asks whether I've noticed all the men noticing me.[/I] [I]I was sixty years old. There is no possible way men were noticing me.[/I] Unless they had a mother fetish. Or a grandmother fetish. So, I was a little uncomfortable with it, but just laughed it off, right? And my mother just would not let it go. It was disturbing enough to me that I am relating the story here, but I don't know what it was that was so disturbing about it. Stuff like that. Grandiosity, or the offer of grandiosity that is really a lie. My mother told me this story: My sister, so happy that my parents were visiting her home that she was dancing, like a ballerina, around the kitchen for them. My sister would have been in her mid-fifties, then. And there was just something so wrong about her having told me that. If it were true, or it if were not true. I felt badly for my sister. I did not tell that to my mother. I don't think I knew what to say. But if that really happened? What a strange and somehow dysfunctional thing. But when I was talking to my sister, she seemed okay with having my mom there. I mean, there were things that were very hard because after all, it is my mother we are talking about, here. Hard to know who to protect from what. Or whether anyone needs protecting from anyone, and I am trying to squeeze out a role, a place for myself, through that role of protector. But I do know my mother. Now, I do. Maybe because they knew darn well that if your mother were not talking about you that way to them? She would have been talking about them that way, to you. That is how it works in dysfunctional families. The primary abuser, it seems to me, will cut anyone's throat but her own to keep the family weak; to keep us isolated from one another's strength, and from the true things each of us knows and cannot face, alone. My mother has tried to come between my sister and her daughters, and between my sister and her husband. I would say too that she has. My mother sucks all the air out of the room, and a marriage ~ especially a recent one, cannot be the same thing it might have been. Unless I am wrong about what I think I see, there. But I think I am not wrong. Those same things happened to me. But I am married to D H. That is all they know to do. One of them, probably the sister, is the instigator, is the one whose own sense of self is tied into recovering or maintaining (or something) the value system set up by the mother. Why doesn't matter. Radical acceptance. No compassion for them, not yet. That is what we are reaching for I think, when we try to understand the why behind things like this. But we are trying to understand mindsets alien to our own. So it can never make sense. Things don't fit. There are no logical conclusions, or any kinds of conclusions, that hold water for us as we are trying to figure out the broken place and fix it. Why doesn't matter, SWOT. That confusion you feel surrounding these issues has nothing to do with you. Unless our sibs commit to their own healing instead of taking what comfort is available in believing what they have to know, on some level, are lies, they will never be people we can trust. So here is the question: Without trust, real relationship is impossible. So, what are we doing, trying to figure out where our sisters and brothers are strong enough to trust both us and themselves? We can't help them with that, anymore than we can believe our kids well and happy. We can only try to see the patterns, and figure out what we can about that for our own sakes. Your genetic mix must be a little different than hers. I don't exactly understand it, but I do love, and I am proud for, the things my sister has accomplished. I get it now though, that she feels differently about me than I think I do feel about her. Radical acceptance. I think my sister actually feels deep hatred for me. Or maybe, together with my mother she does. Or maybe, she always did. Probably that is true, looking back. It could be that in my FOO, because I took on so many of the mothering roles, hatred that cannot be funneled to my mother is funneled at me? I don't know. No compassion. Not today. Not yet. I think the win for them is the satisfaction of isolating us. Or maybe, there is a position of strength in that. I feel like it is wrong in so many ways not to ~ to have turned away from my family of origin as I have. But it feels good to have a place to stand, instead of always trying to figure out the ~ I don't know. How to stand up for them instead of labeling them wrong or bad or something. We have all been hurt so much, already. I don't want to add to that. But maybe I never had the power to do that. Maybe they have been playing and playing me, all along. That would explain why they could hurt me once we had been made vulnerable over what happened, over the way I fell apart inside, when my kids were in so much trouble. They had probably been doing it all along. But when I was all fallen apart, I believed them. ? I have a FB response from my sister that is still there. Sometimes, I go back to review it, just to be sure I saw what I thought I saw. It's unbelievable proof, right there in black and white. It was the post having to do with her purposeful exclusion of my brother. I feel happy to have that to go back to. I might never believe it happened in just that way that it did, without that post. So, don't delete it. Yes she did. She had a right and an obligation to defend you. It was a lack of character that held her back. We will not condemn her for that, though. We know where she has been, and we know how that happened, and I think we know that she loves you enough that if she could have been strong enough, for both you and herself, she would have spoken up to her mother. Or maybe I am way wrong, and my sister and yours too, are more like our mothers than like us. That could be true. Yes he was. That is your brother. He has a right and an obligation to defend his sister. I remember reading a post of Jabber's once. He said that very thing, about his own sisters. I have never forgotten that. Maybe, she always did have this unhealthy kind of obsession with you. My sister has a picture of the two of us, of she and I, in her bathroom, where she can see it every day. ? She showed it to me, pointed it out when we were touring her new house. I have lots of pictures of my sister, and of my sister and me. But they are just scattered around here and there with other family pictures. When my sister took her first painting class, she brought the picture she'd painted to me. From far away, in that other state where she lives, she brought it to me. She said it wasn't a very good picture, but she wanted to know I had it. So, I do. ? No compassion. Not today. My sister no longer has rights of access to me. In my heart, I mean. Not since stalking my daughter and hurting her when she was so off the wall vulnerable and a relationship, some supportive something from her aunt would have meant so much to her. It is one thing not to be involved. It is another to exploit a vulnerability for a win I still cannot figure out. I sound like a dork. I get that. I told my brother he has access to me, anytime. I get it that this is a dorky thing to say, too. I do have that geek thing going on. :O) I love this. True. We can work through it, here. We can understand it enough to gather everything together and present it in a way that makes enough sense that someone else can make sense of it, too. That is what helps us, I think. Not so much the responses we make to one another, but the gathering of information in a coherent package that [I]we[/I] can make sense of, and can trace patterns of behavior through so we can see what is real. Okay. Thank you both for staying with me through this. You matter, and you are helping me be stronger. It does hurt, to think I have been played for a fool and trusted the very people who were doing that to me. I mean, I sort of knew that all along, but it was okay, somehow. It was meant to stand up, and to stand up together, one day. Cheesh. But not to my child, you don't. I see you. [I]I see you back.[/I] Cedar So. I am feeling pretty much like a poop where my sister is concerned. [/QUOTE]
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