It also bothered me that here, unlike facebook where you can create hidden, private groups that are not visible to the public, those very private feelings were exposed to the wandering public eye.
I love that you posted this, Going.
Thank you.
***
I believe, I think I am pretty sure, that the healing accomplished here had to do with its public nature. A decision to stop the domination of shame must be taken publicly, it seems to me. Even the one-on-one of therapy (or the warmer, more supportive communication of group therapy) does not accomplish what was accomplished, here. Part of the capacity to heal, I think this is true, had to do with the fact that we had already established identities here on the site. We were not only poor, abused and blah, blah, blah, desperately seeking surcease from a healthier-than-us, sometimes arrogant, therapist we were paying to listen to us. In engaging as we did here on the site, when we told our truths, when we healed or broke down or got through something hard, what was happening to and for us was real. We continued our work on and interest in, other parts of this site. That mattered for integration of self, I think. We were declaring ourselves as ourselves, the good and the bad ~ and all of it, human. Because of that, we could let go of role. The skin in the game Copa posts about was the currency of reputation here in this cyber-place that matters so much to each of us. It took courage to stand in our truths. The changes in our perceptions of self and other went bone deep, and we supported one another and we came through it.
Over the past weeks, I have been thinking about what was accomplished here. I would do it again. (I would still be doing it now, if anyone were willing.)
:O)
Interest in working in so public a forum seems not to be sustainable. I am like, ridiculously grateful to have had this opportunity. I have that million stars in the sky feeling when I think about the differences for me, now.
Before the work done here, I was a sitting duck for my family of origin.
Total sitting duck.
I had forgiven things I had no right to forgive,
but I had not forgiven myself. Salvation for me was somehow tied into responsibility for bringing us (my family of origin) together. That was my role. Because Family Dinner imagery represented hope of future redemption, the ugliness of what was really happening in our interactions could be negated or ignored. I literally excused hate-filled and inappropriate behaviors from my mother, my sister, my father, my brothers,
as they happened. I did not falter. I was blind as a bat and scared to death and I did not freaking falter.
I had turned my abusers into almost godlike beings who could do no wrong.
That is slavery mindset. Worse still, the mindset hurt into a victimized child (whichever role he or she is required to play) is similar in nature to the mindset of the masochist.
And as you know, that is a moving circle, built on a continuum, too. Weighted on both sides. Affecting every choice, every attraction, every satisfaction.
Together here on FOO Chronicles, we came up with some amazingly instructive material.
Among the most helpful concepts were the understanding that victimized children will have been socialized in environments invested in creating and sustaining the same kinds of belief systems fueling the victimizations of racism and sexism and homophobia and etc in the wider world.
Copa's intuitive understanding that (like the Biblical Joseph) victimized children have been sold
by their families into a slavery mindset was explosively healing.
Unraveling the dynamic of The Shun, realizing shunning too operates on a continuum and that it is not some regrettable thing that somehow seems to blast in out of nowhere was mind boggling. Shunning, the dynamic of The Shun, is the fulcrum, is the core energy, of those families or social organizations employing it.
That was huge, for me.
Once I had burst through the denial that was what Family Dinner was all about, I had nothing at all. Because of the Shun Dynamic. The two things go together: Denial and the truth it was designed to shield us from.
But here I am.
I think we did astonishing work here on FOO Chronicles.
Even with everything I've posted here, without the Family Dinner imagery and the legitimacy of hope it provided, the hurts and very real losses of function in my so darkly dysfunctional family of origin can still leave me reeling. The dysfunction is ongoing. It seems we cannot love ourselves or one another out of it no matter how hard we try. Unbelievably enough, the jockeying for position is ongoing, even today. Strangely isolating actions will be taken, hurtful belief systems will be meticulously created and presented again and again, tomorrow and forever. Yet, there is no leaving our people that we love. Not really. It isn't that we stop loving them or wanting them in our lives or missing them.
It is that we stop believing them or believing in them.
Once that happens, we are free. We can, if we are determined and very strong, reorder our interpretations of self and forgive.
Not them, but ourselves. This is very hard work, to accomplish this shift in perspective regarding who is the bad guy here.
There are those who will claim there is no bad guy.
I have seen the bad guy. Right up close. The everyday banality of it.
They did what they did, they continue to do what they do, our families of origin. They know what they are doing, and they do it intentionally. That is the piece I never got. I was all about how they must have been hurt, to behave as they did. Or how they didn't understand. Or how I must be just an awful person, to think they did what they undeniably did do. It was a very hard thing to admit they knew what they were doing.
Maybe, that was a harder admission to make than to confess, to myself, the horrible, life altering wrongness of the things they did do.
That is where I am, now. How is it they could hurt me, could hurt one another, and mean it and let that stand?
How could they see me (or anyone) suffer and find some value or justification or pleasure in it? Like with the story I am always telling about the lady driver and the eye rolling family of origin (mine), unified in their contempt for this innocent.
What is that.
That is the dynamic of the Shun. The designation of someone to unify around and proceed against.
***
On so many levels, our people are our heroes. I am not sure whether that is a function of denial.
It could be.
Freedom from our pasts is a cold and almost excruciatingly lonely place.
Denial is seductive.
There is such heartbreak in breaking through it. There is shame and hatred and light and roaring darkness, and much strength and courage is required, if we would change those things they taught us about ourselves, and about the value and meaning of our lives.
I think it cannot be done, alone. I think it can not be done in the context of therapy or even, of group therapy.
I like your idea of private Facebooking as an appropriate medium for this kind of work, Going. But. As I went through this, the thought of those, unknown to me but reading along, whether now or in some future time, and able to benefit from my journey strengthened me. I am enamored of the idea of leaving a map. Of leaving the how did I get to here in my healing. How did it feel. How did I survive it. What did I learn, and was it worthwhile?
I love that idea.
The answer is yes. It was worth it.
I don't know why I don't seem to feel the shame of public exposure regarding what I have done here. I wish my story were prettier, too. But somehow, mine is not a very pretty story at all.
I had to know.
We cannot sleepwalk through our lives taking responsibility for everything to the point that people hurt us or our children. I don't know why they do what they do, why they would pick to do those things.
Why doesn't matter.
Okay. So I am making circles again. I still get such a shock when I think about these things.
I will stop now then.
I just feel so pleased that your intention was to protect us, Going. I had thought you were offended that we wrote as we did.
Cedar