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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 657559" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>Hi, JulieAnn.</p><p></p><p>Thank you for reading along, and for posting in to tell us so. It is shaming in one way to know that you know, but that is the thing I am trying to reclaim here, too: Accepting that this is who I am. Accepting the ugliness in it, but not the blame, not the shame, for the ugliness. </p><p></p><p>So, thank you, JulieAnn.</p><p></p><p>We need to claim our stories, our true things about us that we wish were not our true things, before we can reclaim our integrity. </p><p></p><p>I still would have rather been seen as, like, a font of wisdom for a minute. I'm just sayin'.</p><p></p><p><img src="data:image/gif;base64,R0lGODlhAQABAIAAAAAAAP///yH5BAEAAAAALAAAAAABAAEAAAIBRAA7" class="smilie smilie--sprite smilie--sprite6" alt=":cool:" title="Cool :cool:" loading="lazy" data-shortname=":cool:" /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You little rebel you.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That's so awful. You could be bald right this minute for all I know, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference to who you are in your heart, or to how you respond, with your whole heart, to all of us when we need you.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I love that idea. You won't be alone. You won't be distracted by Thing 1 and Thing 2.</p><p></p><p>I love that idea.</p><p></p><p>I will do this too.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yes.</p><p></p><p>Not important. Powerful in an unreal way that she could not enact on adults. Grandiosity or hating you because she hated herself, maybe? My mother seems to hate herself, or to battle hating herself. (Here comes Cedar's usual confusion where all things to do with her mother are concerned.) My mother was part of a group once in which the male who had created the group was doing a study on elderly people and happiness or despair. On how it is that some of us are so unhappy, so lost at the ends of our lives, and some of us seem pretty balanced around what has happened, what was lost, what might have been. And as I am posting this, I realize my mom may have lied about what was found in her case. </p><p></p><p>From her survey, my mother has no regrets.</p><p></p><p>And it was a remarkable enough thing that the person and my mother talked about it two or three more times, to clarify the conclusions drawn from her responses.</p><p></p><p>So there's that.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You are beautiful, SWOT. I don't know how you look on the outside, but your heart is courageous. And that is a true kind of beautiful, real and lasting and true as could be.</p><p></p><p>I know that because I am that way, too.</p><p></p><p>Who knew, right?!?</p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/Graemlins/2.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":wine:" title="wine :wine:" data-shortname=":wine:" /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I don't think we have to convince ourselves we don't love them. I think we just have to see them for the choices they made, for the people they chose to become. We could wish they had been better than that. Maybe they are not so strong as we are, SWOT. Ultimately, why doesn't matter. It is what it is. And I feel in such a happy place because I know that now. (I finished this post after working through FOO issues on your Watercooler thread.)</p><p></p><p>It is a weird little feeling, the way I feel now. Like everything that was so rivetting to me just a few days ago is resting in someplace sunny, now.</p><p></p><p>Well, that's good, then.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>My mother: "Just wait until you've had a baby and you are fat and misshapen." And you could have blown me over with a feather when that did not happen, to me. I had two babies, and that did not happen, to me.</p><p></p><p>I thought it would, though.</p><p></p><p>I wanted babies anyway. But it was very nice that did not happen, to me.</p><p></p><p>On Thing 2's vanity: I don't know what to make of my appearance. We have posted about that, before. I always had to be feeling put nicely together. In the sense that nothing was overtly wrong, or sticking out anywhere, like my hair. Which we have already talked to death about.</p><p></p><p>Oh, wait.</p><p></p><p>That was me.</p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p>What looks like vanity ~ the too tightly presented woman or man, I think that is confusion over what the reactions are in the outer world and how that collides with the reality our mothers taught us, live and well and cackling away in our inner realities.</p><p></p><p>I can remember being so ashamed of what I looked like that I would just give up and go to wherever it was I was going. Now, looking back at my pictures, I see that I could have just gone as myself. And that there was no possible way that could have been the ugly I felt I was.</p><p></p><p>Another lie my mother told me.</p><p></p><p>No, I think it is that I had to put things in some kind of order to make how I thought I looked (beaten/grovelling/broken/defeated) with the responses I ~ with the way people responded to me in the real world. It was a strange thing, a strange "What is true." place to be, that whole issue of appearance and what matters.</p><p></p><p>Still alot of conflict there about that. So, in a very strange way, aging is a gift. I am not what I was, and yet, I am so much more than I was. As I recover myself, I see the niceness in my eyes and smile lines and laughter and kindness. </p><p></p><p>And just kind of general prettiness, which is a true thing that I like very much, too.</p><p></p><p>And I know those things about me now. But I did not know them before.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I know!!! They seem so big to us. But we were little girls, then.</p><p></p><p>And as we know now, they were bullies and cowards, and were very wrong to do what they did.</p><p></p><p>(Very wrong; and Cedar gets that little flash of post-traumatic reality that leaves her wondering what kind of person thinks like I do about her own mother. But I know what to do with that, now. Maya's laughter, the lady from Matrix, smoking and baking cookies. Lisa V., realizing what she is seeing, what that is that that big woman is doing.)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Isn't that something, that you did that? Here is a question I have been meaning to ask but got too wound into my own stuff to remember: So, how is it that you are able to digest and assimilate and communicate so beautifully now, but could not or would not or somehow found yourself unable, to do well in school?</p><p></p><p>What do you think that was all about?</p><p></p><p>Unless you just want to let it go. You are so happily through it, now.</p><p></p><p>I wondered about that a couple of times. Things you would post about intelligence, or about that place where you write from, as though those were not amazing things to be able to do at all, let alone to do so well.</p><p></p><p>That is some pretty heavy duty research you do, sift through, and then post for all of us, here.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Sanity, there. To know it happens, and how it feels when it was you it happened to and what the nature of the struggle to come back is ~ those things are priceless tools to have.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>True. I thought I was the only one having a problem with it.</p><p></p><p>That's the difference. To know this is hard stuff, but to be certain there is a way to come through it. To know everything we need to change everything we know about ourselves is right here, right inside us.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I love this.</p><p></p><p>The way you see it now, I mean. "Honoring my father when he has to leave me."</p><p></p><p>I just love that.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>On the fridge it goes.</p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/Graemlins/rofl.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":rofl:" title="rofl :rofl:" data-shortname=":rofl:" /></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I was so ashamed too, of pictures of myself as a little girl. Then I read somewhere that the thing to do is to look at that little girl I was with compassion. To witness for her, with compassion and pride in her strength.</p><p></p><p>And I couldn't do it.</p><p></p><p>So, that is where I started to work, at first. With those pictures. That is where the concept came from of witnessing without a picture ~ with nothing but that trauma feeling, or that "ping".</p><p></p><p>"There is a better way. Find it.", right?</p><p></p><p>Remember that story I told about the lady in Group Therapy for FOO issues, and her fear, that overwhelming, freeze-you-in-place fear, that somehow it would leap out of time and into a job interview, or into a blossoming friendship? I wish we had been able to find that picture for her, and nurture her into seeing her abuser through her own eyes, instead of his. I don't even remember her name, now. I wish I had known then how to help her, like I would, now.</p><p></p><p>Really though, I am mostly so grateful that I was helped. I hope she found the same kind of support to heal that I have found, here.</p><p></p><p>I do.</p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/emoticons/choir.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":choir:" title="choir :choir:" data-shortname=":choir:" /></p><p></p><p>That's us.</p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/emoticons/hugs.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":hugs:" title="hugs :hugs:" data-shortname=":hugs:" /></p><p></p><p>Cedar</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 657559, member: 17461"] Hi, JulieAnn. Thank you for reading along, and for posting in to tell us so. It is shaming in one way to know that you know, but that is the thing I am trying to reclaim here, too: Accepting that this is who I am. Accepting the ugliness in it, but not the blame, not the shame, for the ugliness. So, thank you, JulieAnn. We need to claim our stories, our true things about us that we wish were not our true things, before we can reclaim our integrity. I still would have rather been seen as, like, a font of wisdom for a minute. I'm just sayin'. :cool: You little rebel you. That's so awful. You could be bald right this minute for all I know, and it wouldn't make a bit of difference to who you are in your heart, or to how you respond, with your whole heart, to all of us when we need you. I love that idea. You won't be alone. You won't be distracted by Thing 1 and Thing 2. I love that idea. I will do this too. Yes. Not important. Powerful in an unreal way that she could not enact on adults. Grandiosity or hating you because she hated herself, maybe? My mother seems to hate herself, or to battle hating herself. (Here comes Cedar's usual confusion where all things to do with her mother are concerned.) My mother was part of a group once in which the male who had created the group was doing a study on elderly people and happiness or despair. On how it is that some of us are so unhappy, so lost at the ends of our lives, and some of us seem pretty balanced around what has happened, what was lost, what might have been. And as I am posting this, I realize my mom may have lied about what was found in her case. From her survey, my mother has no regrets. And it was a remarkable enough thing that the person and my mother talked about it two or three more times, to clarify the conclusions drawn from her responses. So there's that. You are beautiful, SWOT. I don't know how you look on the outside, but your heart is courageous. And that is a true kind of beautiful, real and lasting and true as could be. I know that because I am that way, too. Who knew, right?!? :wine: I don't think we have to convince ourselves we don't love them. I think we just have to see them for the choices they made, for the people they chose to become. We could wish they had been better than that. Maybe they are not so strong as we are, SWOT. Ultimately, why doesn't matter. It is what it is. And I feel in such a happy place because I know that now. (I finished this post after working through FOO issues on your Watercooler thread.) It is a weird little feeling, the way I feel now. Like everything that was so rivetting to me just a few days ago is resting in someplace sunny, now. Well, that's good, then. My mother: "Just wait until you've had a baby and you are fat and misshapen." And you could have blown me over with a feather when that did not happen, to me. I had two babies, and that did not happen, to me. I thought it would, though. I wanted babies anyway. But it was very nice that did not happen, to me. On Thing 2's vanity: I don't know what to make of my appearance. We have posted about that, before. I always had to be feeling put nicely together. In the sense that nothing was overtly wrong, or sticking out anywhere, like my hair. Which we have already talked to death about. Oh, wait. That was me. :O) What looks like vanity ~ the too tightly presented woman or man, I think that is confusion over what the reactions are in the outer world and how that collides with the reality our mothers taught us, live and well and cackling away in our inner realities. I can remember being so ashamed of what I looked like that I would just give up and go to wherever it was I was going. Now, looking back at my pictures, I see that I could have just gone as myself. And that there was no possible way that could have been the ugly I felt I was. Another lie my mother told me. No, I think it is that I had to put things in some kind of order to make how I thought I looked (beaten/grovelling/broken/defeated) with the responses I ~ with the way people responded to me in the real world. It was a strange thing, a strange "What is true." place to be, that whole issue of appearance and what matters. Still alot of conflict there about that. So, in a very strange way, aging is a gift. I am not what I was, and yet, I am so much more than I was. As I recover myself, I see the niceness in my eyes and smile lines and laughter and kindness. And just kind of general prettiness, which is a true thing that I like very much, too. And I know those things about me now. But I did not know them before. I know!!! They seem so big to us. But we were little girls, then. And as we know now, they were bullies and cowards, and were very wrong to do what they did. (Very wrong; and Cedar gets that little flash of post-traumatic reality that leaves her wondering what kind of person thinks like I do about her own mother. But I know what to do with that, now. Maya's laughter, the lady from Matrix, smoking and baking cookies. Lisa V., realizing what she is seeing, what that is that that big woman is doing.) Isn't that something, that you did that? Here is a question I have been meaning to ask but got too wound into my own stuff to remember: So, how is it that you are able to digest and assimilate and communicate so beautifully now, but could not or would not or somehow found yourself unable, to do well in school? What do you think that was all about? Unless you just want to let it go. You are so happily through it, now. I wondered about that a couple of times. Things you would post about intelligence, or about that place where you write from, as though those were not amazing things to be able to do at all, let alone to do so well. That is some pretty heavy duty research you do, sift through, and then post for all of us, here. Sanity, there. To know it happens, and how it feels when it was you it happened to and what the nature of the struggle to come back is ~ those things are priceless tools to have. True. I thought I was the only one having a problem with it. That's the difference. To know this is hard stuff, but to be certain there is a way to come through it. To know everything we need to change everything we know about ourselves is right here, right inside us. I love this. The way you see it now, I mean. "Honoring my father when he has to leave me." I just love that. On the fridge it goes. :O) :rofl: I was so ashamed too, of pictures of myself as a little girl. Then I read somewhere that the thing to do is to look at that little girl I was with compassion. To witness for her, with compassion and pride in her strength. And I couldn't do it. So, that is where I started to work, at first. With those pictures. That is where the concept came from of witnessing without a picture ~ with nothing but that trauma feeling, or that "ping". "There is a better way. Find it.", right? Remember that story I told about the lady in Group Therapy for FOO issues, and her fear, that overwhelming, freeze-you-in-place fear, that somehow it would leap out of time and into a job interview, or into a blossoming friendship? I wish we had been able to find that picture for her, and nurture her into seeing her abuser through her own eyes, instead of his. I don't even remember her name, now. I wish I had known then how to help her, like I would, now. Really though, I am mostly so grateful that I was helped. I hope she found the same kind of support to heal that I have found, here. I do. :choir: That's us. :hugs: Cedar [/QUOTE]
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