Work and Germany Part II: Abandonment Recovery

[New Leaf]

Cedar, your appreciation of Iz, thank you. It touches me, because he was such a gentle soul, as are many Hawaiians.

I am going to share something with you this morning. I was hesitant, to push the reply to thread button, because I do not wish to offend anyone,
but I believe it is fitting,
because of the many similarities to what we are going through right here, right now.

Our issues, on a smaller scale, are much like the issues Hawaiians face. They are a people, dispossessed of their lands.
I know we are not supposed to discuss political views here, I am not sharing this in a political sense, rather a sense of loss, abandonment, and recovery.


Ua Mau ke Ea o ka ʻĀina i ka Pono is a well-known Hawaiian phrase which was adopted as the motto of the state of Hawaii. As such, it is commonly translated as

"The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness".

Hawaiians have been dispossessed of their lands,

as we have been dispossessed from dreams for our d cs.

Hawaiians are literally, physically, culturally,

spiritually connected to their aina, their land,

much as we are connected to our children.

We have been dispossessed.
Us.
Hawaiians.

This dispossessed people have had to live in their place, their land, after suffering two centuries of loss. This people have had to carry on with dignity, despite their great loss.

Much like we are striving to reach a place of dignity and grace, in spite of our loss.

This people have had to face their loss,
in every aspect of their lives,
just as we do.

Hawaiians have done so,
with all of the stages of grief that we encounter.

Disbelief, dismay, assimilation, denial, anger, resentment, discovery, tears, strength, rejuvenation, and finally, aloha, or the ultimate love.

Warrior Rising.

This is dedicated to my sisters and all those out there fighting this fight of conduct disorder with grief and grace.

For the feelings I have are so similar to what I see my children's people going through.

These people have found it within them to fight their battle with dignity and "Kapu Aloha"

They are standing up for themselves, and for what they believe to be right.

I do believe that is what we are doing here.

Standing up for ourselves, and for what is right.

All of the stages of emotion that we have expressed.

Disbelief, dismay, assimilation(or attachment), denial, anger, resentment, discovery then detachment, tears, strength, rejuvenation, and finally, aloha, or the ultimate love.

I do believe we will get there sisters, we are there.

It is natural to have revisits of the different emotions. I think the idea of kapu aloha, will help us;

"An order of restraint placed by Hawaiian cultural practitioners, to act with only kindness, love and empathy.

We need to look at this, and how we view ourselves.

Kindness, love and empathy.

We can view our d cs in this way also, without enabling them.

Kapu Aloha, it has many applications for us all.

We have lived with this, with our d cs, for such a long time.

How do we deal with it?

How do we face it?

How do we continue on,
in the future,
for as long as it takes for our d cs to change paths?

Kapu Aloha, kindness, love and empathy.

I would like to add, joy, faith, peace and strength.

Restore, regenerate, rebuild.

Cherish. Lift up.

Sacred spirit soaring.

Chanting down Babylon.

Who do we stand for?

We stand for our cause, the right to live peaceable, fulfilled lives, in spite of our dispossession.

We are not disconnected, we still believe that our children have the capacity to reach their potential.

Hope.

Faith.


Until that happens, we will live the best lives we are graced and blessed with.


We are Warriors Rising.


Mahalo
leafy

 

[Copabanana]

Or maybe I really did turn ugly.

Remember how to deal with this, Cedar. "Unfortunately, I look ugly today."

there is somewhere within you too, some scary place where we are sure we deserved the bad behavior.

Yes.

These feeling states ~ these are the ways we were taught to see ourselves by our abusers.

For me, I think it might be that I taught myself to see myself this way, in response to how I was treated.

I got up and came in to touch base with you all. Because it was scary and lonely and I felt spurned.

How good it is that we have each other in this scary place. Knowing that others can and do related makes such a difference.

So, do you see the ulterior dark thing at work in this whole ugliness dialogue?

Yes. Since the call from my son I have felt somehow tainted. Uneasy.

It shames me but I have a certain contempt for my son.

Yesterday I asked M which of his sons was tallest. Rodrigo, he said. He is 1.85 metros. (Meters.)

Well from that almost started a fight, because we could not both of us together reach any common understanding of how tall that was in feet and inches or how tall it was in relation to my son, who is 6'2".

M wanted his his Rodrigo to be taller than my own. To be 6'5" and nowhere could I find a calculator on the internet that yielded this result. All of them showed Rodrigo to be almost 6'1", a bit shy of the height of my son.

It was a ludicrous competition. I felt (and said). What else does J have to win at, except his height?

Poor J. And M answered: that is back to him. His efforts and hard work or lack of it.

So it got into a discussion of my son's present situation and M declaring that he did not know that my son was only paid $100 a week, when the other workers employed by the Brazilian son were paid $100 a day. He insisted I had told him it was $100 a day that my son received.

M said: Whether he is mentally disabled or a fool, or not, I do not want anybody taking advantage of him.
We need to go to where he is working and see if he is really working hard or not. Because if he is working hard he needs to be paid as are the other workers.

So we discussed the logistics of this and how and if it was possible.

I tried to tell M: Until J is willing to work in a regular job or go to school, what are his alternatives? This is all he has. If I contribute to a sense of dissatisfaction or inequity in him, that he is being mistreated? What will happen next, if he does not have it in him yet the desire or where with all to create a next alternative or step?

Actually, I said, I think both the father and son are using J. The one for cheap labor the other for rent. My son pays a third of the rent and utilities and he sleeps in the living room. But what can I say to him that does not bring about more problems and vulnerability?

M said: Tell him that he needs to work hard so that he merits equal pay.

he is simply present without judging whether he merits that care, or whether another time was better or worse or how the caregiver might feel about him

Somehow this relates but I do not know how.

I have a child who does merit care. Ultimately from himself. Over and over again he has put himself at the mercy of others, either their generosity or exploitation. It is painful for me, and it seems M too.

I do not want to have contempt for my own child. But something very close to contempt is being triggered.

Why is everything so hard?

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

Hawaiians face. They are a people, dispossessed of their lands.

I read mystery novels to relax. Last night I was reading about a father whose son was murdered. The father was portrayed as having lost his own future. Of the times he would have enjoyed with his son. Of the carrying on of his name (this was his only child) Of grandchildren. Of the infinite possibilities that come from our children carrying on our spirits and legacy, ourselves. The loss in us in the belief in the potential of our children, takes away from us our sense of an infinite future. Rightly or wrongly, this is a blow that we need to confront and surmount.

We downplay it. We see the loss as for them, or in our relationship with them. There is way more. We are in the process of dying. The only real future we have is through our children.

a sense of loss, abandonment, and recovery.

One of the things we are in the process of doing, I think,is trying to recast this loss into something else. Finding a generativity in ourselves, an understanding of life of humanity that is bigger than our own immediate experience. And beginning to live through and for this, instead of our own individual experience.

"The life of the land is perpetuated in righteousness".

This is fascinating, Leafy.

The Jewish people did not have their own land for thousands of years. And in many lands where they lived as outcasts they were prohibited from owning land.That loss led to a cultural flowering and a great humanity and empathy.

Much like we are striving to reach a place of dignity and grace, in spite of our loss.

Yes.

"An order of restraint placed by Hawaiian cultural practitioners, to act with only kindness, love and empathy.

This is very interesting to me. This rising up in goodness, in response to their own victimization.

We need to look at this, and how we view ourselves.

Kindness, love and empathy.

Yes. I do not know much about Hawaiians, despite my brother's heritage.

I know something about mainland Natives. The alcoholism, drug use, domestic violence and other problems of the reservation speak to the possibility of self-contempt and self-hatred that may have been internalized just as we have internalized self-destructiveness in response to our treatment as children.

I believe that each of us has internalized the values of empathy and kindness for others. At the expense of ourselves.

We can view our d cs in this way also, without enabling them.

Yes. I believe this too.

Sacred spirit soaring.

Chanting down Babylon.

Chanting down Babylon in ourselves.

Thank you New Leaf.

COPA

 

[New Leaf]

Life is hard. It is also beautiful.
I have to write quickly and be off to work.

This ugly feeling, we all go through it.

I was thinking of Marilyn Monroe, and something I had read about her, going through days of depression, and laying in bed, eating candy and junk, and feeling so badly.

Marilyn Monroe. This beautiful woman, idolized, feeling ugly.

What of stories of super models, going through ugly awkward stages in school. UGH.

It is traumatic, to feel this way.

Ugly.

I do not think it is true.

I think it is the trauma rising up in us.

The fact that we are looking at it and dealing with it.

How courageous.

We are not ugly, neither is life.

We will stand up against this.

In defiance.

One day at a time.

Feeling ugly or not.

It is a new day.

leafy

 

[Copabanana]

I feel very bereft. With a twist. Sort of befouled. Dirtied. By my own corruption and by that which has touched me from others. I looked over at M last night and this morning and felt he could be a betrayer.

Like I am poisoned. (My current mystery novel has a poisoning. They said poisoning is the crime of women.)

My buying is coming to an end. I do not think I will be doing it again, at least uncontrolled. I understand that this buying frenzy has covered up, channeled feelings in me, that are mine, and that I will feel them, now.

I do not know what this bereft state of mind is. Whether it is contemporary or of time past.

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I am sneaking this time. So, I need to be quick.

I do not know what this bereft state of mind is. Whether it is contemporary or of time past.

For me, these are feelings I was taught to feel about myself unless everything was perfect. Bereft, inept, everything bad that had come from everything good. I don't know either Copa how to see this differently yet. It has to do with the posting about my mother, and about how I suddenly felt so rotten about myself. This is what they wanted. I know that much. This is how we were taught to feel about ourselves unless our abusers were happy...and they were only happy when we were decimated.

When we were bereft; inept.

Leafy, beautiful posts.

I have to go, now.

Volunteer was great, today. I looked awful, though. I think I really did. But it is difficult to know. I was able to identify those feeling states, but not address them.

Cedar

 

[New Leaf]

My buying is coming to an end. I do not think I will be doing it again, at least uncontrolled. I understand that this buying frenzy has covered up, channeled feelings in me, that are mine, and that I will feel them, now.

Good for you Copa, you have come very very far. I believe that you can accomplish anything you set your mind to. Little steps at first. It will happen.

Bereft.

I feel the same.

Bereft.

A Soliloquy on Bereft-ness, or lack there of.

I am upset at myself, because I have stumbled at something
I want to accomplish.... again.
I am one of those yo-yo weight people.
Maintaining my weight when I am busy training for my paddling,
but in the off season. UGH.

So, I feel at a loss,
when I am actually gaining
...weight
....too quickly.


Bereft.
Deprived or lacking of something.

It is an oxymoron, that my over abundance, leaves me feeling deprived and empty.

I did not accomplish my eating goals.
Or shall I say, my do not eat too much eating goals.
This time of year is difficult.
I really, really like food.
I like sweets, too, especially dark chocolate.

My clothes are shrinking and I don't even have a dryer.

Actually,
I am
bear-eft.

My winter bear fluffiness is starting to cramp my style.
I shall have to ignore all of the office goodies and have some willpower there.
It is hard, yummy stuff will besiege us until after the holidays.

I am like Winnie the Pooh thinking too much about honey,
except he is cute,

I do not feel cute.

So restraint it is. Ugh. I like yummy stuff, but my body does not wear it well.

I don't know if it is wise to be too hard on myself during the holidays.

I think I will start with getting my walking routine back.

Then I will carry my own kind of yummy stuff to work

and stop going to the place where they put all the goodies.

It is in a corner in the outer office, goodies, calling my name,
especially at 1:30 when the afternoon tiredness,
settles over me like clouds hovering over the mountain top.

Then, I am in danger of getting whiplash from all of the head bobbing.

For some reason I have it in my mind if I snacked on something,
I would wake up.
It doesn't work.

Bereft-deprived.

I know I am an emotional snacker, not giving much thought during stressful times, to my eating.

I think this has much to do with trying to fill up what deprived feels like.

No wonder I cannot be satisfied,
I am trying to fill up the wrong puka,
with the wrong substance.

Bereft.

I shall have to fix this, too Copa, or I will be very upset with myself.

I have enough on my plate (if you will pardon the pun)
to make myself more upset by my own hand.

So, we both have stuff to work on.

I like this article, it gives some good advice that is not demanding and difficult sounding.
Like taking it slow, thinking about breaking the habit, then working towards that goal.

http://lifehacker.com/top-10-ways-to-break-bad-habits-1694247761

Good luck to is both, we can do this.

leafy

 

[New Leaf]

Leafy, I wonder if your version of my "Just don't think, Cedar." is "What are you crying about." The abuser hurts you and denies that it hurt you. So, huh. That is twisted, crazy-making stuff. In our vulnerability, in our little girl or little boy knowledge of the world, we believed ourselves wrong and them, right.

Where I defiantly refuse to cry, you cry defiantly and try to figure out why. That accusation "What are you crying about." is abuse. It's crazy making. It's "You are not being treated unfairly. Buy into it. Believe it."

The answer is patently obvious. The abuser did not miss that. The answer is: "I am hurt." "I am crying about that I am hurt, you stupidly abusive person."
"What are you crying about?"
"None of your beeswax." Leafy hisses, meaning it with all her heart. "I define myself, now."
And her tears flow, healing every broken place and becoming tears of joy.

Thank you, Cedar, this is exactly what happened, and what is happening still, with my sister.
It is interesting to me, that she is not stopped.
Also interesting, that she is a horse rescuer, horses are highly sensitive animals. Isn't that something? She has a way with horses, but can't stand to be around my sensitivity. Huh. She asked me "Why aren't you painting?" I said, "Because I have to feel deeply to paint, I do not want to go there"
She replied "Who told you that you can't feel?"

It is almost like the vaudeville act "Who's on first?"

I will never to this day, understand this.

But, I will say,that I am stronger for it.

“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning


You Cedar, told not to think.You are the epitome of this.

Yet, you are brilliant. You are such a thinker.

To change it from resentment (or trauma, as Serenity's posting this morning would indicate) to some generous something that just is what it is. We can learn a lot from fairy tales and myth and legend. We can learn concepts like "Hero's Journey", ponder over the goodness of mistreated heroines like Cinderella and Snow White and Sleeping Beauty and Maleficent.

This is for us from our inner child.......

Or to turning our role from abused to heroic; to somehow see our stories as brilliantly noble instead of as the shaming, hurtful things they are when we are seeing ourselves through the eyes of our abusers. It would be something like I did in finding outside witnesses who could know, without equivocation or forgiveness or any of the things I see when I see myself being hurt by the patterns in my abusive FOO. I did that, in coming through and reinterpreting the worst memories. It was before you joined us, Leafy. My witnesses were Maya and the black lady from Matrix and Lisa Vanderpump.

They are still there, laughing like Maya and smoking cigarettes and baking cookies like the lady in Matrix, and saying, like Lisa, with such certainty: "Unacceptable."

Know thyself

Saying No - For Copa, and For Us

The last thing love is for me is faith. The bracelet of love is a ball and chain. Of gold and silver and all of the jewels in the world.

Love Liberates...

love

leafy

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

"Love liberates."

There is courage in loving.

I wonder if it is so simple a thing as reframing our defining of ourselves and our feelings. Maya: "You were a piss poor mother of young children...." And yet, Maya was able to reinterpret her story, to rewrite it and come through the terrible things she did come through, and to know love for herself well enough to describe it as she has, here.

It must take courage to love yourself like that. With that kind of clarity and dignity and without shame or braggadocio.

That's an amazing thing.

I hope that is where we are going, next.

To loving ourselves like that. That is where we are going.

:O)

***

So Leafy, if Maya's sister asked why she was crying, or why she was not painting...what would Maya say?

What would be the expression on Maya's face?

Remember Maya telling Oprah about the sacrosanct inside us where we may meet God, one day. That place is what was hurt in us, maybe. The right to sacrosanct; to preparation for God.

What a wonderful thing, to think it. To believe it.

***

That is how we call others to witness for us, and to teach us how to redefine ourselves. I love what Maya has done for herself, and for so many women. I wonder whether I would ever have such courage as to know those things she knows.

To know those things, in my bones.

I love the feel of open, generous center from both Maya and the black lady from Matrix. I love the way their feet are big, and the way they accept that there are hard things as just a matter of course. And bake cookies anyway. And wear sparkly dresses and portray nothing so much as themselves, Present.

That is strength, and that is how courage looks and feels.

That is what we lost when we broke in the face of what was happening to our children. But here is something equally true: This time when we heal, as we healed the first time through the Sleeping Beauty kiss that was loving our children ~ this time when we heal, we heal the core; the generous center of self.

And we will laugh, easily and sure as rain, like Maya and like the lady from Matrix.

***

I had not seen the final portions of this last clip, Leafy, where Maya tells us about her mother's death. I love that Maya takes responsibility; that she stands up and finds the words and carries through with courage and has no shame around having done what was required of her without cowardice or regret. That is celebration of life, maybe. Where we stumble is shame at our courage, at our honesty. But the shame is not ours. The shame does not mean we cannot love our people. Maya: "You were a piss poor mother of young children." And then, she went on to claim the right to love the dying mother, and to accept that in a glorious way that was clear and real.

***
A major point:

***

Shunning....

This is what they are trying to take from us with their shunning. The right to believe our love matters.

***

We are not in reciprocal relationships with our families of origin. There is not strength there, for us; no kindness of spirit, not for anyone.

I am thinking about my family of origin ~ thinking about the times I saw kindness or generosity or courageous love.

We are in the strange position of loving courageously with nothing to fire either courage or bravery; that place within us where sanctity is seeded has been so long under attack. That place is where our abusers did their work, making us believe them instead of ourselves.

Our Sanctuary, our Sanctuary Within, so we could never rest or heal or know purity or peace.

Here is a thought: I wonder whether we can feel fully human in a real, fiery, present way without the love of family. I think not. I think that is where we lose that center place, that place of sanctity Maya talks about.

Maybe, sanctity is the thing beneath abandonment and is protected by it as surely as shame was a marker for abandonment.

And maybe, once we begin the process of reclaiming ourselves through true things, that journey to center, and that opening without fear, are just natural things that happen once we decide to heal.

A white and a six petaled Promise appear
moon shadowed, in pools catacombing the Earth

I wonder where the rest of that poetry is. I will find it and post it here for us, one day.

Also, I am reading Lieh-Tzu, translated by Eva Wong. (We are doing this in my Tai Chi class. We have been reading the same three philosophers for six years. This is the seventh year. This way of marking personal change is instructive. My interpretations of meaning have changed dramatically over this time. As angry as I am now? I must have been very much more angry about everything, then. Here are the three stages: We see everything and must comment. Then, we realize we know nothing. We begin to say nothing, no matter what we thought we saw. Then, we realize neither thing matters.

We matter.

At this point, we are present, and meaningful conversation may or may not take place.

I just got that, after all these years. Now, I cannot find the chapter it was in.

Roar.

***

Once we decide to tell ourselves true things, once we name the Liar and learn it isn't us and never was, that is when it becomes possible for us to disbelieve our abusers. Soon after, we realize they were wrong in everything they told us about ourselves, the first time they told us who we were. (Note Maya's concept of believing people the first time they tell us who they are. This is the same thing, only regarding ourselves. Here again, I think this would be an issue of reclaiming internal, versus external, locus of control.)

In any event, that is where we are going. That place of sanctity within that our abusers could never sully because it is buried beneath self contempt, beneath shame, beneath abandonment. So, in magical literature, there are seven seals. Perhaps there are seven seals in this sense, too. We did not know abandonment lived beneath shame, or that we would need to work through so much that was shaming, learning to see ourselves through our own eyes, or to find witnesses who could see how wrong our abusers were. So, all we know is that there are levels, and they seem to get more overwhelming, the deeper we go.

Like pressure under water.

***

I was just thinking about how twisted, how unremitting, and with what merciless energies, the attacks by our families of origin have been. They seem to have tried with every venomous weapon at their disposal. Up to and including shunning their own people.

I wish I had not been brought up in such an environment. I am very certain I will have been such an instrument many times myself.

That is probably the highest reason we intend to heal. Never to be so afraid again that we function from that automaton place where we are the only living things in the room, pale imitations of ourselves, of who and how we could be ~ of how we will be, now that we are healing.

I suppose everything is happening as it should.

We are very strong.

I did not know that.

***

Anyway, that is the essence of shunning: rejecting the value of our love.

That is the biggest lie my family of origin ever told me. That my loving ~ that anyone's loving appreciation or delight ~ could be an unwelcome thing. That there were levels and tiers.

So, I am in the middle of this one now, and I don't know what I mean. It has something to do with appreciation. Which we have to be Present to feel.

And I don't know how to do that, of course.

***

I go back again and again to Leafy's sister accusing her of not painting.

Why do you suppose she does that, Leafy.

Very cruel, those words. Whether you were or were not painting...what does the sister have to say about your painting when you are painting, Leafy? Is she comforting and strengthening, or is she contemptuous?

Some years ago, my sister took a class and created her first painting. Though we live many states apart, she brought it to me, for safekeeping.

I don't know why.

That's why I sometimes fall back in love with my sister.

Pseudo-mom.

I need to be careful around those issues.

***

Yet, you are brilliant. You are such a thinker.

:O)

I don't know about that, Leafy. But I love that Dr. Suess. I had this on my fridge for the longest time:

Your brains in your head
your feets in your shoes
Your hands in your pockets
you got nothin' to lose

You can go
any direction you choose.

I added the parts about empty pockets. That's how it felt when our family fell apart.

Directionless.

I wish I'd been more disciplined in...okay, you guys. Here is where we do ourselves in. "I wish I'd been blah, blah, blah." Simple enough statement. It began with beating myself up a little, cleaning that up to "more disciplined", and berating myself for where I am in my life now.

None of those things are objectively true.

I did beautifully, and I did it long past the time that would have been possible for most of us.

Actually, for those who remember the issues I explored in going back to school, and in choosing that particular school...and this was after that first therapist had had at me, too. It is astonishing that I could use any of that to berate myself, now.

But I just caught myself doing exactly that.

Isn't that something.

This is where we will begin healing globally, maybe. As we come to understand, to really get it, that we have been defining ourselves and our lives through the eyes of the abuser. And reinterpret their teachings in the light of that sanctuary space within us.

Unsullied.

Just like Maya told us it would be.

***

Or maybe it will be: "F you, Mom."

Because I really am still very upset with my mother.

And I am determined to be upset with my sister.

So, here is the real question: If I am not going to stay in this place where I hate everyone, how am I supposed to interpret all this?

Well, I don't know.

***

“But there was no need to be ashamed of tears, for tears bore witness that a man had the greatest of courage, the courage to suffer.”
― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

When we can cry like Maya, like tears don't matter, like they are an extraneous thing that just happen because you are standing right at the center of some place of amazing grace and Presence that has nothing to do with suffering or really, with any emotion we can identify ourselves with right now (and when I can, too) then we will be stronger enough, Leafy.

That is how we will know.

How would you like your sister to respond, when you cry?

***

No wonder I cannot be satisfied,
I am trying to fill up the wrong puka,
with the wrong substance.

Bereft.

I shall have to fix this, too Copa, or I will be very upset with myself.

Leafy, I am noticing that the circle involves punishing ourselves. We do things so we can go automatic negative tape.

That is the "reward". The reward is the hit that keeps us in the old, familiar emotional reality. As we become healthier, these tapes intensify, the feelings become impossible to ignore and BOOM.

We can see them.

We can see the circle.

Stop it, Leafy.

No beating yourself up.

That is, in the crazy lexicon of our families of origin, the reward: Self contempt.

Leafy, if you follow the dialogue, you will come through stronger and stronger places where there is shame or all kinds of other bad feelings. This is why, I think so anyway, we run those negative tapes in the first place: To heal is to change everything. Change is scary. We have to mean it, if we intend to heal.

If the physical manifestation of your process is weight, Leafy, I would like you to fight very hard not to condemn yourself. Without the "reward" of self disgust Leafy, you will lose weight. The more you are able to love yourself, degree by degree, the less you will require the self condemnation that keeps you feeling safe ~ safe, like when you were a little girl. When it no longer matters to you Leafy, when you no longer need it, the weight will fall away.

We each are meant to be whole and healthy and strong, Leafy. Everything in our lives is deigned to accomplish that, to see it through to conclusion.

There is nothing you need to do; there is nothing you can do.

You are healing already by confessing the secret, thereby choosing to discard the protection, the circling protection, of shame.

The answer for you will be as it has been for each of us here Leafy, I think. You must learn to hold yourself with compassion, and true joy in your aliveness. Not when you did not eat chocolate, but when you did.

We must extend mercy to ourselves, Leafy.

We cannot heal, without it.

If you detest that you are heavy, then that is where you must begin to cherish every smallest or largest or whatever size particle of self. That is where true love begins, Leafy. With where we were taught to hate ourselves. With those poor, hurt parts of us that are wounded and infected and yet, were somehow courageous and strong enough to get us to now.

This is how you carried yourself through the pain of what was, Leafy.

Honor yourself for that.

It was a very hard thing.

And you did it.

You already did it, Leafy.

***

Here is a Shakespeare for you:

The quality of Mercy is not strain'd
it falleth as the gentle rain from Heav'n
upon the place beneath.

It is twice blest;
it blesseth him that gives and him
that takes.

"Tis Mightiest in the Mighty.

Isn't that beautiful.

Here is Frankenstein, again Leafy. (Mary Shelly.) He teaches compassion for the self, especially for those of us hurt as little kids and taught there were parts of us that were unacceptable to our people who loved us. Those parts of us lost integrity with the rest of us, Leafy. They are like dead parts of Frankenstien's monster, stitched together somehow to make a whole.

We have to love our Frankenstein as he is, Leafy.

We have to go to the cave and melt the ice into water and stay with him while he cries with the pain of it.

If we can hold ourselves in compassion, if we can examine the stitches and celebrate the healing instead of condemning ourselves for the brokenness, then we will heal.

So I would love it if I could hear that you would stop punishing yourself in your words, Leafy.

You are perfect, as you are.

You will have to take that on faith for a little while, maybe.

That is why we are here, all of us on FOO Chronicles.

To take it on faith for one another until we are stronger enough.

***

"Once my fancy was soothed with dreams of virtue, of fame, and of enjoyment. Once I falsely hoped to meet with beings who, pardoning my outward form, would love me for the excellent qualities which I was capable of unfolding."

Mary Shelly
Frankenstein's Monster Speaks

Cedar

 

[New Leaf]

I go back again and again to Leafy's sister accusing her of not painting.

Why do you suppose she does that, Leafy.

Very cruel, those words. Whether you were or were not painting...what does the sister have to say about your painting when you are painting, Leafy? Is she comforting and strengthening, or is she contemptuous?

She is always telling me what talent I have. But she is not understanding the vulnerable place art comes from. Or, she is? I am confused by her.

It is interesting Cedar. I am trying to step back and view this unemotionally, even keeled, as a psychoanalyst would.
That is what it would take I think, to understand the machinations of it.

She said on my trip "You must bring your sketch pad and draw my horses."

I love horses, they do not love me.
(I had some very scary experiences with horses as a child).

I have never drawn a horse.

I have been thinking about it.

So, you know what I have in mind?
I want to draw her a horse, and put every sensitive word and emotion known to man, in tiny, almost indecipherable, writing, within the horse.

It is a loving, and also defiant gift.

In honor of her dedication to saving them.
That is horses, they are very sensitive creatures.
How strange that she would hold that dear.

It will be my trojan horse gift to her.

But, instead of warriors popping out
all of my feelings that she would hold hostage
will be within the delineation.

She will be unknowingly,
gazing at my innermost emotions,
that she has contempt for.

I believe her contempt for my emotions has to do with a feeling of responsibility towards them.
She is not a bad person. She has many good qualities. I do love her. Even as she has held herself in enmity to my feelings and thoughts. Love thy enemy.

I think she is as greatly confused by her actions, as I am.

I feel a sort of odd compassion for her.

I am also feeling that she has built a certain strength in me.

Isn't that strange Cedar?

Am I like Patty Hearst? Held captive by her?
Tied to her by our blood relation,
my emotions kidnapped by her expectations?

Yet,

I am liking this idea more and more.

This horse drawing

It is forming
and building
it will come to me.

An "I am" statement, wrapped up in the package of something she loves.

Cedar and Copa, I am coming to a sense through our writings and examination, Viktor Frankl, David Brooks, Iz, Hawaiians, Germany, abandonment, love, joy, peace, faith and finally forgiveness, the places we have gone and what we have experienced.

We have been chosen.
It is a training ground for us.
There is something marvelous within us,
that was meant to come through this fire.

A purpose. A meaning.
Surely, we have already made use
of our experiences here in CD
to help others
and in helping
others
we are helping ourselves.

Suffering.
There is something to be said for suffering.
We are almost there.
I can feel it.
Bereft-deficit.
Understanding.
Knowing.
Potentiality.
Purpose.
Meaning.
Fulfillment.

We cannot even begin to understand how truly not bereft, we are.

Thank you sisters.

I must go and iron boys tuxedo. He has to take a picture in it for his band class.
A tuxedo, imagine that.

My little penguin. Not so little anymore.
His voice is changing, to the point where sometimes he speaks,
and I think there is someone else in the house. Wow.

Good thought filled loving day to you!
(((HUGS)))
leafy

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Remember how to deal with this, Cedar. "Unfortunately, I look ugly today."

Yes. I will remember, Copa.

I posted this for California on her thread but I love it for us, too:

"We are seldom aware of the profound effect that unresolved negative emotions have on us."

"Dampened by years of self-distrust, displaced by years of codependency in which we have channeled our creative energies into managing others' perceptions of us, those energies awaken with startling power and poignancy. We are like avalanche survivors, coming to with tingling limbs as we rejoice in our survival, throwing off the numbing weight of others' agendas.

Julia Cameron
The Artist's Way at Work

For me, I think it might be that I taught myself to see myself this way, in response to how I was treated.

When I envision the event so that I can see the eyes of the abuser, Copa? That is where those lessons were learned, for me. It was that truth, the one in the eyes of the abuser, that I needed Maya and the others to witness for me to be able to dispel the breakage place.

To dis spell; to break the hypnotic place where we break.

But I could not do it without imagining the abuser's behaviors witnessed by women stronger than I am. More than one, even.

Maya, the black lady from Matrix, Lisa Vanderpump. Who said, on one of the shows that I saw when I was watching all those episodes of Beverly Hills Housewives after daughter's beating: "Unacceptable." She was talking about something one of them had done to the other. But when I brought her in as imaginary witness for me, she said it upon witnessing what had happened to me.

"Unacceptable."

And it was an utter condemnation of the adult abuser's behavior toward the little girl I was suddenly able to see as myself.

Free.

Dispelled.

It was hard, though, to go through it.

Remember how I just wasn't sure I could come through it?

Thank you for witnessing for me, Copa and Serenity, IC, pasa.

It mattered, knowing you were reading along.

It shames me but I have a certain contempt for my son.

I learned that I was holding my son in contempt too, Copa. Remember when you helped me with it? I could not see where I was judging him or how I was holding every broken dream against him.

I have come so far in the way I see him and myself and all of my family since that time, Copa.

Thank you.

Our issues, on a smaller scale, are much like the issues Hawaiians face. They are a people, dispossessed of their lands.
I know we are not supposed to discuss political views here, I am not sharing this in a political sense, rather a sense of loss, abandonment, and recovery.

Yes! A beautifully drawn point, Leafy!

:O)

***

Regarding your feelings about your sister asking you why you are not painting, Leafy. Here is a quote from Julia Cameron's The Artist's Way at Work. I even have the page number on this one: p 186

Our creative self is characterized by a youthful vulnerability. This means feelings of distrust and fear can easily be triggered and spiral out of control without adult intervention. We carry within us both the Creative Child and the discerning, protective adult ~ and we do need both.

Cedar

I am not through reading and responding, Copa. Tai Chi this afternoon. So, I will write more, tomorrow.

I think J is beautifully tall.

If he is being underpaid Copa, I think J would be the best person to deal with this. If you become involved, it will be like when I was forever calling the homeless shelter about my daughter.

The child suffers.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

You guys, I am writing this brief note on the computer of M's niece. My computer is broken. I do not know when it will be fixed. I did not have time to respond to your posts but I am grateful that you are all here. When I logged on, it was the strangest feeling. I felt as if I had arrived home.

Trust that I value you and hold you in my heart. I will be back as soon as I am able.

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

It is natural to have revisits of the different emotions. I think the idea of kapu aloha, will help us;

"An order of restraint placed by Hawaiian cultural practitioners, to act with only kindness, love and empathy.

We need to look at this, and how we view ourselves.

I watched the videos, Leafy. They were beautiful, and I am honored to have seen them.

Thank you.

I have not seen the greeting where men touch foreheads and then, hug. I have not heard sadness described as it was in Iz video, as seeing the tears in one another's eyes. The voice of the woman in the second video seemed to have been threaded into the wind. It was soothing and poignant and mesmerizing, even. The clouds coming down....

Thank you for this beautiful gift.

(I turned it off when the man began to rock rap. Maybe tomorrow, now that I know he is going to disturb me while the clouds are coming down, I will watch past that part. Maybe, that will be their anger, too. The way it feels to have been threaded into the wind like that and to have had their culture rudely disrupted.

The dancing was magical.

I have only seen hula the way they do it for tourists.

I had no idea.

I wish I had something as lovely to return to you.

I read mystery novels to relax. Last night I was reading about a father whose son was murdered. The father was portrayed as having lost his own future. Of the times he would have enjoyed with his son. Of the carrying on of his name (this was his only child) Of grandchildren. Of the infinite possibilities that come from our children carrying on our spirits and legacy, ourselves. The loss in us in the belief in the potential of our children, takes away from us our sense of an infinite future. Rightly or wrongly, this is a blow that we need to confront and surmount.

We downplay it. We see the loss as for them, or in our relationship with them. There is way more. We are in the process of dying. The only real future we have is through our children.

Yes.

I don't know how to surmount it, Copa. The anger beneath this knowledge fueled that contemptuous way I was seeing my son and even, my daughter too, because they were not the adults, and mine was not the life, I had envisioned in my imaginings, or in the choices I made in their best interests instead of my own. That future we are so sure they will take into both hands and run with is part of why we stay so firmly tied in to enabling. It isn't only their futures they are destroying. They are changing what might have been for all of us into what will be, by their will.

I think so often about the Kennedy family, and about their daughter Rose, who was mentally ill. The father Joseph had her lobotomized. The surgery was a terrible failure. (The surgeon, so I have learned, went on to perform other lobotomies. There is evidence that for some, the lobotomy was helpful.) In any event, the Kennedy family went on to change things for all of us ~ for those directly affected, and for all of us, in the changed way we now more fully understand valuing living beings.

I keep thinking about that, everyone. About how their misfortune changed the world for all of us.

Happy Hour here, everybody.

Have a good night.

Cedar

 

[New Leaf]

Thank you Copa.
I will be looking for you.
I had to leave work, hubs went to ER for extreme dizziness.
I don't think I can post from the hospital.No reception.
Please say a prayer for my hubs. Thank you.
leafy

 

[Copabanana]

I had to leave work, hubs went to ER for extreme dizziness.

What a worry, New Leaf. I am saying a prayer now for your husband. Is it blood pressure?

I am hoping you are both home soon and all is well.

I am back. M fixed the computer. I had inadvertently pushed a button and not known it.

Let us know how Hubs and you are.

I have not caught up on the thread. I had a difficult call with my son. I will catch up tomorrow.

COPA

 

[New Leaf]

Hi Copa thank you, we are freezing in here. They are thinking acute pancreatitis. Maybe gallstones? His blood work off the charts. It is a wait and see. CT belly scan. They are crazy busy, 3 trauma calls.

I would like a glass of wine please.
leafy

 

[Copabanana]

They are thinking acute pancreatitis. Maybe gallstones? His blood work off the charts.

How are Hub's spirits? Is he in pain? Is he afraid? Will he be hospitalized? Are you still in the ER?

COPA

 

[New Leaf]

Still here, trying to figure out how to get his truck home. He is not in pain, watching football, he doesn't want to stay. Still in ER with all the beeping. He just came back from cat scan so we will see. As my dad would say..... Just one more thing.
Thank you for your concern and kindness Copa

 

[Copabanana]

Well, whether he wants to stay or not is not really the point. He has to stay if he is ill. He may need surgery.

Thank goodness for football. In my household futbol is soccer. It works wonders, too.

I would not worry about the truck. Just get yourself home. The truck will handle itself. Will you go to work tomorrow? Is your son with you?

COPA

 

[New Leaf]

My boy was taking his penguin tuxedo picture for band. He is at a friends.
Blossom is going to pick me up and help me take the truck home, pick up boy, let out the dogs, feed the animals then she will bring me back here.
I will see about work tomorrow, depends on hubs prognosis. Sigh