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My daughter is a prostitute
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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 687868" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>How awful for you, and for everyone. </p><p></p><p>I am sure you were still beautiful.</p><p></p><p>Beautiful women are a most special gift to the world, having to do with simplicity, and joy.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I am so terribly sorry this happened. </p><p></p><p>This is what I know about Shunning: Shunning is not just what happens at the end of something. It is not only a punishment enacted, but a moral system designed to establish and maintain power through fear of exclusion. You (and everyone) will have been kept strictly in line, from the beginning, through fear of exclusion. Threat of the Shun is a divisive, controlling, power-over dynamic fueled by our deepest abandonment issues. </p><p></p><p>I am so sorry.</p><p></p><p>You survived the worst they could do to you. How humiliating for you. I was humiliated for the longest time over being shunned by my family of origin. But here is the thing: Having been away from them has allowed me to heal. I have worked very hard to heal, but I think now that I would have healed anyway, once I was no longer under the pervasive and corrupting influence of that Shunning dynamic.</p><p></p><p>It's insidious.</p><p></p><p>Painful and frightening as it was at the time, you are better off for having been excluded. At the heart of it, when we are shunned, what it means is that we have refused to participate in hurting the others. The Shunning dynamic, which has to do with power and control, cannot maintain cohesion in the face of defiant kindness. It requires harsh and endless judgment, and ridicule progressing to victimization, to operate.</p><p></p><p>You will have been someone who displayed compassion.</p><p></p><p>Whatever they said, that is the why behind the shun.</p><p></p><p>Every time.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Life works that way though, Slimony. Did you ever notice that? We seem to do just the worst thing for ourselves, believing it the right thing. We become fascinated, when something is foreign to us, and need to learn the truth of things for ourselves. When the constructed thing that we believed would save us falls apart and we see it for what it is, we are like: Huh.</p><p></p><p>That is why we must do our best we know and learn to hold ourselves with Radical Compassion. Then, maybe, we can help ourselves and one another see more clearly.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>"...<em>with whatever pain they have purchased...."</em></p><p></p><p>Oh, my. My daughter has not explored this lifestyle. It must have been so hard for you to hear. </p><p></p><p>You must love her deeply.</p><p><em></em></p><p><em>"Those we love are simply...those we love." </em>That is a quote from Anne Rice. Who also wrote, under a pen name, about this very thing. It has so little to do with sex, and so much to do with what it is to be human, and to have been hurt.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I am quite certain, according to my daughter as a teen and to my son now, as an adult, that in fact the worst mother in the world is me. Which is how, according to my son, I have gone on to become the worst grandmother.</p><p></p><p>There was only one thing to do: Dig out my high heels. So, I did. And when I did? I remembered who I was.</p><p></p><p>How sad that I cannot actually walk in them anymore.</p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p>In seriousness, I am sorry. Nothing hurts more than raising teenagers who are troubled. It destroys us, because we love them so.</p><p></p><p>I'm sorry, Slimony.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>He must have been a handsome, charismatic man.</p><p></p><p>It seems to me that our marriages are where we work out our deepest questions about what is real, and about who we are. We all slip in ten thousand ways, and find ourselves in the strangest situations.</p><p></p><p>I do, for sure.</p><p></p><p>But it is one thing to decide to end a marriage or relationship and say so. That has to do with respect for ourselves. It is another to accidentally slither off with an air hostess.</p><p></p><p>How awful for you to have been through that, with all the questions it must have raised for you. You have had to be very strong. It seems you lost everything by which you defined yourself.</p><p></p><p>But here you are now, living your own beautiful life, everything so different.</p><p></p><p>Good for you.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Ouch. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It could, but...does her behavior, at 31, have anything to do with who you are? I get into that all the time, too. I am appalled at something someone I love has done. (Oh man, is that the understatement of the year! My people that I love are so whacked out. And downright mean and always looking for someone to blame. Someone who will not call them out on their behaviors. Someone safe, like me.) They say the most awful things. But this is what I have learned: Whether I feel badly or not is a choice of perspective I am making. The question is: What is it about me that leaves me feeling terrible about the way someone else does whatever it is that they do. </p><p></p><p>What is it about me.</p><p></p><p>Then, I am back at the center of my thinking. </p><p></p><p>Maybe they have decided to hate me, now. I will not be able to change that, or it never would have happened in the first place. This is a really important piece. Whatever people do to one another? They do it that way because that is how they come back into balance, themselves. From the beginning, whatever did happen is what was bound to happen, sooner or later. If we know them well enough to know about the patterns in their lives, we will see that, sure enough, this is how they do their lives.</p><p></p><p>So, how does what they do have anything to do with our not being perfect enough to have prevented them doing what they have done, before, to others in their lives? </p><p></p><p>Huh.</p><p></p><p>So, feeling badly about myself turns out to be how I punish myself for disappointing myself for not having been perfect enough. Then, the question becomes how long I need to punish myself. For something someone else is intentionally doing. </p><p></p><p>To <em>me</em>, those dirty rats.</p><p></p><p>And the answer there, I am learning, is to change my hairstyle and manner of dress and pull out my highest heels. Whether I can actually walk in them anymore is beside the point.</p><p></p><p>We are talking about intention, here.</p><p></p><p>The answer is to sizzle a little bit, and to feel beautiful and strong.</p><p></p><p>That's the answer, when someone has decided to hurt us because we were not perfect enough for their tastes.</p><p></p><p>Nothing else works. And life is too short to suffer for things I haven't done. I have done enough bad things on my own. I don't need to be borrowing anyone else's bad stuff. It isn't that I don't wish with all my heart that everyone loved me. </p><p></p><p>Unfortunately, they don't.</p><p></p><p>Huh.</p><p></p><p>That is why high heels were invented, maybe.</p><p></p><p>Our own little way of saying, "F*** you."</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Especially after Daughter's behavior at Family Dinner, the bride-to-be is aware of Daughter's potential behavior. </p><p></p><p>All decisions surrounding Daughter are out of your hands.</p><p></p><p>I would not know how to think about this, either. But I do know daughter's behavior cannot be controlled by you. Nothing about our adult children (or anyone else, for that matter) can be controlled by us. I do know being nice, doing the right thing, trying to understand and never condemn keeps us in a terrible emotional place. I do know that for us to say, "Why! Oh, why did he/she do this thing that was so costly to me?!? Where have I gone wrong, that they think so little of me?" is the worst thing we can do. We are seeing ourselves through someone else's eyes instead of our own, when we are thinking like that.</p><p></p><p>I have enough trouble seeing through my own eyes.</p><p></p><p>We need to get these people out of our heads. </p><p></p><p>When these things happen, we need to think instead: "What a feckless brat." And we need to say: "You were raised better."</p><p></p><p>They can think whatever they like about that.</p><p></p><p>Because the truth is they were raised better, or we would not be here wondering where we went wrong.</p><p></p><p>I am working very hard on learning that, myself.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I am happy for you.</p><p></p><p>You are healing.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I hope so, too.</p><p></p><p>It might be wise to discuss this with an attorney. Learn whether and how you might protect yourself, and let daughter know that in this case, there will be consequences to her actions. </p><p></p><p>Slimony. You are not responsible for any of this. Would it help you to learn what your mother's choices may have been? It was a different time. Women were not allowed to work outside the home, except in near-slavery conditions for barely enough money to keep body and soul together. I read a book recently about a young woman whose only choices were to choose prostitution, or to live her life masquerading as a male.</p><p></p><p>She chose to masquerade as a male.</p><p></p><p>So she could work.</p><p></p><p>Maybe, your mom was too pretty to masquerade as a male. Or maybe, everyone already knew she was a girl. She may have had no other choice.</p><p></p><p>So she did the courageous, defiant thing.</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23344356-the-gods-of-tango" target="_blank">http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23344356-the-gods-of-tango</a></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>You know what happened to me? Once I began seeing things differently? I found that I had been my own worst enemy, all along. I learned that I was raised to be my own worst enemy. That is why it felt right to show myself no mercy. Someone broke that kind of thinking in to me.</p><p></p><p>I felt so badly for myself, once I was able to know how cruel everything had been, and how hard. Once I was able to see myself, and to see that little girl, and that young woman I was, with compassion. I read something from Brene Brown that helped me very much: That we humans are born hard wired for conflict. </p><p></p><p>We can do this, Slimony. We can learn to see differently and come to cherish our own lives.</p><p></p><p>It is a most wonderful gift, to be alive. Just to breathe. Just to see things, and to feel.</p><p></p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]iCvmsMzlF7o[/MEDIA]</p><p></p><p>And another:</p><p></p><p>[MEDIA=youtube]8-JXOnFOXQk[/MEDIA]</p><p></p><p>Eckhart Tolle has been most helpful to me:</p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/840520-the-power-of-now" target="_blank">https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/840520-the-power-of-now</a></p><p></p><p>And Maria Harris:</p><p></p><p><a href="http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/893277.Dance_of_the_Spirit" target="_blank">http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/893277.Dance_of_the_Spirit</a></p><p></p><p>And Anne Lamott:</p><p></p><p><a href="https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7113.Anne_Lamott" target="_blank">https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7113.Anne_Lamott</a></p><p></p><p>Know I wish you well with all my heart, Slimony. The pain of this time will bring compassion. For yourself, and for all of us.</p><p></p><p>And joy.</p><p></p><p>And laughter, which is the best thing. Not the nasty kind of laughter, but the good, generous kind.</p><p></p><p>That is how it happened, for me. </p><p></p><p>Cedar</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 687868, member: 17461"] How awful for you, and for everyone. I am sure you were still beautiful. Beautiful women are a most special gift to the world, having to do with simplicity, and joy. I am so terribly sorry this happened. This is what I know about Shunning: Shunning is not just what happens at the end of something. It is not only a punishment enacted, but a moral system designed to establish and maintain power through fear of exclusion. You (and everyone) will have been kept strictly in line, from the beginning, through fear of exclusion. Threat of the Shun is a divisive, controlling, power-over dynamic fueled by our deepest abandonment issues. I am so sorry. You survived the worst they could do to you. How humiliating for you. I was humiliated for the longest time over being shunned by my family of origin. But here is the thing: Having been away from them has allowed me to heal. I have worked very hard to heal, but I think now that I would have healed anyway, once I was no longer under the pervasive and corrupting influence of that Shunning dynamic. It's insidious. Painful and frightening as it was at the time, you are better off for having been excluded. At the heart of it, when we are shunned, what it means is that we have refused to participate in hurting the others. The Shunning dynamic, which has to do with power and control, cannot maintain cohesion in the face of defiant kindness. It requires harsh and endless judgment, and ridicule progressing to victimization, to operate. You will have been someone who displayed compassion. Whatever they said, that is the why behind the shun. Every time. Life works that way though, Slimony. Did you ever notice that? We seem to do just the worst thing for ourselves, believing it the right thing. We become fascinated, when something is foreign to us, and need to learn the truth of things for ourselves. When the constructed thing that we believed would save us falls apart and we see it for what it is, we are like: Huh. That is why we must do our best we know and learn to hold ourselves with Radical Compassion. Then, maybe, we can help ourselves and one another see more clearly. "...[I]with whatever pain they have purchased...."[/I] Oh, my. My daughter has not explored this lifestyle. It must have been so hard for you to hear. You must love her deeply. [I] "Those we love are simply...those we love." [/I]That is a quote from Anne Rice. Who also wrote, under a pen name, about this very thing. It has so little to do with sex, and so much to do with what it is to be human, and to have been hurt. I am quite certain, according to my daughter as a teen and to my son now, as an adult, that in fact the worst mother in the world is me. Which is how, according to my son, I have gone on to become the worst grandmother. There was only one thing to do: Dig out my high heels. So, I did. And when I did? I remembered who I was. How sad that I cannot actually walk in them anymore. :O) In seriousness, I am sorry. Nothing hurts more than raising teenagers who are troubled. It destroys us, because we love them so. I'm sorry, Slimony. He must have been a handsome, charismatic man. It seems to me that our marriages are where we work out our deepest questions about what is real, and about who we are. We all slip in ten thousand ways, and find ourselves in the strangest situations. I do, for sure. But it is one thing to decide to end a marriage or relationship and say so. That has to do with respect for ourselves. It is another to accidentally slither off with an air hostess. How awful for you to have been through that, with all the questions it must have raised for you. You have had to be very strong. It seems you lost everything by which you defined yourself. But here you are now, living your own beautiful life, everything so different. Good for you. Ouch. It could, but...does her behavior, at 31, have anything to do with who you are? I get into that all the time, too. I am appalled at something someone I love has done. (Oh man, is that the understatement of the year! My people that I love are so whacked out. And downright mean and always looking for someone to blame. Someone who will not call them out on their behaviors. Someone safe, like me.) They say the most awful things. But this is what I have learned: Whether I feel badly or not is a choice of perspective I am making. The question is: What is it about me that leaves me feeling terrible about the way someone else does whatever it is that they do. What is it about me. Then, I am back at the center of my thinking. Maybe they have decided to hate me, now. I will not be able to change that, or it never would have happened in the first place. This is a really important piece. Whatever people do to one another? They do it that way because that is how they come back into balance, themselves. From the beginning, whatever did happen is what was bound to happen, sooner or later. If we know them well enough to know about the patterns in their lives, we will see that, sure enough, this is how they do their lives. So, how does what they do have anything to do with our not being perfect enough to have prevented them doing what they have done, before, to others in their lives? Huh. So, feeling badly about myself turns out to be how I punish myself for disappointing myself for not having been perfect enough. Then, the question becomes how long I need to punish myself. For something someone else is intentionally doing. To [I]me[/I], those dirty rats. And the answer there, I am learning, is to change my hairstyle and manner of dress and pull out my highest heels. Whether I can actually walk in them anymore is beside the point. We are talking about intention, here. The answer is to sizzle a little bit, and to feel beautiful and strong. That's the answer, when someone has decided to hurt us because we were not perfect enough for their tastes. Nothing else works. And life is too short to suffer for things I haven't done. I have done enough bad things on my own. I don't need to be borrowing anyone else's bad stuff. It isn't that I don't wish with all my heart that everyone loved me. Unfortunately, they don't. Huh. That is why high heels were invented, maybe. Our own little way of saying, "F*** you." *** Especially after Daughter's behavior at Family Dinner, the bride-to-be is aware of Daughter's potential behavior. All decisions surrounding Daughter are out of your hands. I would not know how to think about this, either. But I do know daughter's behavior cannot be controlled by you. Nothing about our adult children (or anyone else, for that matter) can be controlled by us. I do know being nice, doing the right thing, trying to understand and never condemn keeps us in a terrible emotional place. I do know that for us to say, "Why! Oh, why did he/she do this thing that was so costly to me?!? Where have I gone wrong, that they think so little of me?" is the worst thing we can do. We are seeing ourselves through someone else's eyes instead of our own, when we are thinking like that. I have enough trouble seeing through my own eyes. We need to get these people out of our heads. When these things happen, we need to think instead: "What a feckless brat." And we need to say: "You were raised better." They can think whatever they like about that. Because the truth is they were raised better, or we would not be here wondering where we went wrong. I am working very hard on learning that, myself. I am happy for you. You are healing. I hope so, too. It might be wise to discuss this with an attorney. Learn whether and how you might protect yourself, and let daughter know that in this case, there will be consequences to her actions. Slimony. You are not responsible for any of this. Would it help you to learn what your mother's choices may have been? It was a different time. Women were not allowed to work outside the home, except in near-slavery conditions for barely enough money to keep body and soul together. I read a book recently about a young woman whose only choices were to choose prostitution, or to live her life masquerading as a male. She chose to masquerade as a male. So she could work. Maybe, your mom was too pretty to masquerade as a male. Or maybe, everyone already knew she was a girl. She may have had no other choice. So she did the courageous, defiant thing. [URL]http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23344356-the-gods-of-tango[/URL] You know what happened to me? Once I began seeing things differently? I found that I had been my own worst enemy, all along. I learned that I was raised to be my own worst enemy. That is why it felt right to show myself no mercy. Someone broke that kind of thinking in to me. I felt so badly for myself, once I was able to know how cruel everything had been, and how hard. Once I was able to see myself, and to see that little girl, and that young woman I was, with compassion. I read something from Brene Brown that helped me very much: That we humans are born hard wired for conflict. We can do this, Slimony. We can learn to see differently and come to cherish our own lives. It is a most wonderful gift, to be alive. Just to breathe. Just to see things, and to feel. [MEDIA=youtube]iCvmsMzlF7o[/MEDIA] And another: [MEDIA=youtube]8-JXOnFOXQk[/MEDIA] Eckhart Tolle has been most helpful to me: [URL]https://www.goodreads.com/work/quotes/840520-the-power-of-now[/URL] And Maria Harris: [URL]http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/893277.Dance_of_the_Spirit[/URL] And Anne Lamott: [URL]https://www.goodreads.com/author/quotes/7113.Anne_Lamott[/URL] Know I wish you well with all my heart, Slimony. The pain of this time will bring compassion. For yourself, and for all of us. And joy. And laughter, which is the best thing. Not the nasty kind of laughter, but the good, generous kind. That is how it happened, for me. Cedar [/QUOTE]
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