Work and Germany Part II: Abandonment Recovery

[New Leaf]

We can't leave the truck, it will get towed.
Big $$$$.

 

[Copabanana]

Of course. Let us know when you hear about Hub's condition. Try not to ignore your own needs. Are you not going to sleep at home?

COPA

 

[New Leaf]

Not sure we are still waiting for cat scan results. It will take a bit longer. Thank you Copa.

 

[Copabanana]

Let us know. I am going to bed. It is a worry.

COPA

 

[New Leaf]

Thank you Copa They think he passed a gallstone, nothing on the cat scan. No food tonight, stay in hospital tomorrow and maybe out Saturday. Prayers work. Thank you dear sister. Sleep well.
Leafy

 

[Copabanana]

Thank you for letting us know Leafy.

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Finding a generativity in ourselves, an understanding of life of humanity that is bigger than our own immediate experience.

This is brilliant, Copa. I do feel that way. I feel I am searching for a sense of completion to some puzzle I cannot see the parameters of. I had not thought about the sense of incompletion, of vital, unfinished business, the things that have happened in our families will have left us with.

This has never once occurred to me, but I see it so plainly now.

For us, these feelings of incompletion will have to do not only with our children, but with our families of origin.

That was genius, Copa.

I loved the way you wrote about the bracelet of love that day, too.

That was beautiful.

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

Do you think we are learning to love our children in place, Copa? Could it be that we are letting go of who we were so sure they would be and in a way, meeting who they are for the first time?

I am happy for J's good height. There will be other good things too Copa, that you will learn about him now, I think.

Maybe, we are learning our children as the real, complex people they are. Did we stave off the pain of what was happening by clinging too long to their innocence, or do all mothers do that, I wonder.

I think every mother continues to believe the best of her child.

In this too, like we have had to do with our Families of Origin, are learning a more complex, and more human, reality?

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.

Yes I think M is right here, Copa. For J to become a man, he must make his place in the world himself. He will decide on his own, as a man stepping into his manhood, when he is ready for more.

I don't know why our kids seem to have to do it this way, either. I actually think part of it is that they have never wanted for anything. They are not shamed by their poverty.

Literally, it doesn't matter to them that they have no money.

Daughter is that way, too.

That is part of the betrayal they feel I think, when we stop enabling and they feel the lack of money or security for the first time. There is almost a fascination in seeing what it is they can do without.

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.

You write so beautifully, Copa.

Is this what our children are doing, too?

"...a cultural flowering and a great humanity and empathy."

All I wanted was a doctor or writer and a freaking attorney. None of this flowering into empathy stuff.

That was a joke.

A true one.

I am like the gardener in the Little Prince in that way Copa, wondering how the roses I planted grew into the roses they are.

Climbing fences into alleys; sharp with thorns.

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 think IZ fascinates me Copa because there is every physical reason for him to blame himself. We blame ourselves. That is why we are forever taking responsibility and apologizing and trying to make everything right and trying to be perfect and kind. IZ does not have that feeling to him. He is able to be Present to the woman loving him while she does his hair. That is a very hard thing to do. It requires that IZ trust not only the woman, but himself.

He must trust himself to be lovable.

That blows me away.

I wonder whether that is where we are going, too.

Oh, I hope so.

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?

This is hard for me, too. You were the one Copa, who helped me see that I was disrespecting my son in my thinking this way. I try to remember how you helped me see that in every interaction with my son, now. It's really hard too Copa, because the secret truth is that I am so hurt and angry about what has happened. The place I can stand:

My son is hurt and angry about where he has taken his life, too.

I don't know a rock bottom place to stand up from around these issues Copa, but I think believing my kids have what it takes to learn to create their own lives just fine without my angry input on what I wanted their lives to be is one place for me to stand quietly and to love and believe in them from.

I found something the other day about Da Vinci having been believed to be a total failure until he was 46. Our children are likely to live longer, healthier lives than our generation will. So...maybe I don't know as much as I think.

I really liked what you said about completion, Copa.

That fits in here, fits in with my dissatisfaction with what is.

Seamlessly.

Maybe, these feelings will drive us to take on and complete things we would never have attempted, had these things not happened, Copa.

But I too have that sense, and an urge to explore new things in the sense of sifting through them to find gold.

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 hate to see old shoes on my son, or workmen's boots.

What kind of mother thinks this way about her own child. I am surprised at myself. I do not want to do this to either of my children but I am.

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.

Yes. Daughter tells this story. She was living in the Native grandmother's house with the father of her first child. (Baklava Grand.) This was the safe house for their family. The grandmother took in the generations, cared for the children with whatever she had. There was never enough.

I was very prejudiced then, but I didn't know it. I did try to be kind.

There is that, in my favor.

Anyway, this is the story: One of the adolescent girls was at the mirror learning who she was becoming as she changed into the woman she would be, and learning what she thought of that, and of herself. And the Native grandmother, who had been separated from her family and placed in an orphanage, where she was forbidden to speak her language or see her people, asked the young girl who she thought she was, looking into the mirror like that, when all she would ever be was just a dirty Indian.

It was hurtful enough for her to see this that my daughter told the story to me.

We are not in that place anymore, our civilization. So there is hope for us all. But my prejudice surprises me, even now. This is what I see in the way I see my children's choices about their lives.

My prejudice.

I don't know how to let go of that, other than to claim it when I do recognize it in myself. Everything is bound up so tightly in that sense of prejudice. Even the way we think about the other forms of life sharing the planet with us. That is why I am frozen in place now, maybe. I literally do not know anymore, what is true.

But I am thinking about joining PETA. As an act of obvious decency that I was not aware of, before.

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

I wonder whether this is the primary human response, when confronted with those who do not see us as fully human? In defending ourselves from extinction, and from the definition of self that justifies extinction, do we come then finally to learn and know and believe in ourselves? Going down, do we declare our own names, for the time of reclamation? Do we sell ourselves out too, before we learn who we are and choose again, our initial values?

This is a pattern enacted and re-enacted over time, if we think about it. We cannot see the wonder of who we are (or the horror if who in are, in some aspects of self) until we are forced to choose, individually or as a people: live or die.

There was a time when it was believed women did not have souls. That we were breeding vessels only. Mistreatment was justified that way, and control legitimized that way.

Isn't that ugly.

How is it we get to such ugly places.

One of us, I think it was Kalahoo, posted that in her culture, a primary piece of rehabbing those who have committed criminal acts is for those who have known them in their lives to speak to those imprisoned of their good acts and thoughts, and to remind them of who they are.

Is this what is fueling gang membership and loyalty?

I am falling into mosaic pieces over these questions, and over why this piece of rehabilitation is not being shouted from the rooftops.

Of course that is the answer.

And it is the answer for our difficult child kids, too.

And our marriages, and ourselves.

Everything gets all twisted though. Like in the poem about the center not holding.

Ugly.

I do not think it is true.

I think it is the trauma rising up in us.

Yes. Either I have turned suddenly reprehensibly, irrecoverably despicably ugly or I have been dealing with the mother lode of trauma. I do think of that when I see myself as especially uncomfortably awkwardly repulsively ugly.

And I have just been mucking around in that abandonment place.

But, whew.

And sometimes, I am able to remember that these could be the trapped feelings fueling the others.

But, whew.

It must be the same dynamic, that contempt dynamic, at work in each of us as we recover.

Very hard, to do this.

***

Marilyn Monroe ate candy in bed?

Kewl.

I believe myself to be courting disaster when I don't set the table.

I am serious.

Sometimes, I rebelliously eat things standing at the counter.

When I am healthy, I will eat food in my bed.

Maybe.

With one of those trays, and a butler to give me permission and a beautiful bed jacket.

Okay. I will drink coffee in bed.

I have done that, actually. In New Orleans. And there was chicory in the coffee, and it was served in a silver pot, and I have never forgotten it.

We will stand up against this.

In defiance.

One day at a time.

Feeling ugly or not.

Well, here is the thing. These feelings twist how I interpret both myself and the other guy and the sunshine. I will try very hard to remember that primary reason for the feelings. It must be that we are coming up against a proscription laid down by our abusers.

That must be why you said we would stand against the feelings defiantly, Leafy.

I can only stand there in them, like a Sadsack of a person.

Sometimes, I cannot stand up to them at all. That is when I go role instead of real. I have been conscious of that lately, too.

So, I have been feeling pretty messed up with trying not to be popular, and with just standing there, ugly in public. I do give myself credit though, for going out in public feeling this way.

So, somehow...the answer here is to drink my coffee in bed. Thinking about it shifts who I am. It feels like a mortal sin even to consider it.

Copa.

Maybe that is why you went to bed.

Defiantly, in a taking no prisoners way, to bed. ("I know you ate food in there, Copa." Cedar hisses. "I just know it.")

I bring coffee in a beautiful porcelain pot up with me in the morning and drink it while posting to you all. It would be simple to drink it in bed.

Maybe I will do that.

It seems sinfully wrong even to think it.

:O)

I will do it.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

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.

Could it be that without the loss, the people (as is happening with each of us too, maybe) would never have discovered their unique value? And all of it is part of what it is to be human or maybe, just to be alive at all. Struggling with ourselves, in the dark.

All of us.

For the Jewish people, for our difficult child kids, for the Hawaiian people and the Japanese people and the Native Americans and for all of us, and for the white people like me, too. But we keep slipping into angry or entitled and wear fur and enjoy the sparkle of diamonds against our skins.

We like to define what it is to be human as "us", when to be human is all of us, though we can only see just a little of who we are. And then, we might get it finally that it isn't only all about the humans.

Finally.

But this is all one too many for me. I lost myself in the kaliedoscope of it, again.

All we can do then is see the colors.

Maybe, that is what they mean when they talk about the Fool on the Hill.

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.

Maybe your buying was to recreate yourself as someone else, Copa. When you became that other person, you would look and feel and speak in a way you judged as better than the current way.

I think I do that very much. Or take my value from my appearance. (Which: Unfortunately, I am ugly today.)

roar

Maybe now, you are (like I seem to be too, but it's almost impossible) learning to incorporate everyone you might be, and become who you are. Well, that's not it. It has something to do with incorporating past and present selves. With that dynamic we have of now being not enough, and incorporating our better, future, more perfect selves to soothe the broken self of the present. Whom our abusers taught us was forever imperfect, was forever not ever going to be something that was not poison and poisoned, which is the name of the cycle between our abusers and ourselves.

It is like when Serenity used to write us about the hot potato.

It has that sparkly kind of feel to it.

That's why I can't see anything, maybe.

So I just have to stand there, and not know what to make of any of it.

I like what I said about incorporating past and future selves. I think that matters as a piece of what is happening to us now as we forego incorporating a perfect future self. We are learning (defiantly) to be who we are without those perfect future selves we might become to help us sustain ourselves in the faces we see as ourselves, now.

So, that's pretty courageous of us.

Surely, we cannot be as imperfect as this time feels.

Maybe, this is the beginning of naked; of having nothing to protect.

I always thought it would feel better than this.

Huh.

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

"You must bring your sketch pad and draw for me my horses that I love as you see them. Because you matter to me like my horses do because of the love I feel for you, and for them, too. And I wish to share that with you, to open within us both a space for sisters of the heart."

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

The statement will change so beautifully as you write it, as you heal, Leafy. This is your a part of your path.

A miracle for you, for when you are ready.

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.

You know, I was thinking about this alot yesterday, Leafy. I think where we are going as we change is not chosen so much as recovering our lands that were ours to begin with and finding them beautiful and creating, there, something that never was.

Because we have lived our successful lives without most of ourselves. Coming into possession of ourselves now (if that turns out to be what we are doing and I am on that Fool on the Hill place today and can see nothing whatsoever) will cause our bounty and good fortune to overflow. Our cup will runneth over so to speak, but we will have been humbled by the pain in real as we cast our roles aside and just sit there like IZ being who we are.

Not even beautiful, but just ourselves and so, beautiful after all.

But I don't know so much about this part, yet.

Still on the path, so that's good. I think the path is going to be more difficult than we know. We've only just gotten started, and what is my solution?

To drink coffee in bed.

For heaven's sake.

Since that is all I know to do? That is what I will do.

But I'm just saying.

Cedar

 

[New Leaf]

Marilyn Monroe ate candy in bed?

I'm one of the world's most self-conscious people. I really have to struggle.

I'm selfish, impatient, and a little insecure. I make mistakes, I'm out of control, and at times hard to handle. But if you can't handle me at my worst, then you sure as hell don't deserve me at my best.

What good am I? I can't have kids. I can't cook. I've been divorced three times. Who would want me?

Marilyn Monroe

For some reason, I am having a fascination with Marilyn Monroe, not the movie star image she created, but the real Marilyn- Norma Jean

Okay, this is not candy, but she is eating in bed, and damn, she looks gorgeous.....

This is her Hollywood persona, this is not Norma Jean, or maybe it is both.

Are we all actors and actresses, playing out bit parts in our world?

Can we be who we really are, in spite of the roles given us?

Are we on the way to REAL?

Enjoy your coffee in bed Cedar.

Copa, in your bed,
you have been in the company
of super stars.

leafy

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Okay. So, here is something else I thought about . Maybe, we were so busy being strong and kind and good and believing so hard we could all do this coming together as family that we never acknowledged or listened to or incorporated our own negatives.

Maybe, that is what is happening to us, now.

Maybe that is why this part feels so personally, individually awful.

We could never have discussed these feelings, which may be normal parts of things to be looked at as developing children, with our abusers. Or, given our trust issues and our need to be perfect and perfectly strong, with anyone else, either.

So it could be that in a very real sense we are indeed reparenting ourselves as we come through this part.

I like that thinking very much.

Now, I know how to do this.

I think the intensity of the negativity was scaring me because it felt so much like my mom. Like, inescapable. Like "Don't you dare." and "Just don't think." And etc.

But I am not there, anymore.

:O)

So we were right, then. We need to cherish ourselves through this time and whatever worse is coming next as, in a perfect world, we would have been cherished through these normal developmental stages when we were children.

These are normal developmental phases you guys.

We can do this.

We were great mothers. Honestly, you know it it true. We were really great moms. We can absolutely deal with these issues just as we did for our children.

We were good moms. Happy and loving and kind moms.

Healing two very very big birds with one diamond stone, then. I can stop asking myself how this happened to my children that I loved too much because they were the Sleeping Beauty kiss that brought me back to life. The hardest part about it was recognizing that the stone was a diamond. Huge, like IZ in the blue water.

Huge like that.

And all we do is shine the light through the facets of the diamond.

It is not a throwing rock.

It is a rock from:

Like that. From that place.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

For some reason I have it in my mind if I snacked on something,
I would wake up.

In my dreams of driving D H when, in my dream, he was too sick to drive I could not stay awake.

In my dreams of the Victorian mansion, and of the secret room with a thousand thousand secret drawers, so narrow, so hard to access that I could not breathe...I could not wake up. I could not stay awake.

If you snacked on something, you would reawaken to real life. But where you are meant to be is asleep for this little time maybe, so you can pay attention.

You have been very strong, Leafy.

Amazingly strong.

You guys?

Add the imagery of eating in bed in this thread. Of Copa, returning defiantly to bed. Of me, requiring permission to do what Copa has defiantly done, just to drink my coffee in bed.

Leafy, snacking to stay awake ~ to not go to bed, at all.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

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

Oh, Copa. I am going to miss you.

Thank you, Copa.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

They think he passed a gallstone, nothing on the cat scan. No food tonight, stay in hospital tomorrow and maybe out Saturday.

I am so happy for you both that D H is okay and will not need surgery and can go home good as new on Saturday.

How awful for him, and how frightening.

You were so patient and kind it seemed Leafy, in the way you posted about it to us.

It was beautiful, to read.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

This is very beautiful, too. More intrusive than the first one.

3 Hours Long Tibetan Singing Bowl l Meditation Chakra Healing | Tone G# Music | Throat Chakra

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

For some reason, I am having a fascination with Marilyn Monroe, not the movie star image she created, but the real Marilyn- Norma Jean

Then we will be fascinated with her, too.

Sacred ground.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

So, here is our Leafy, then.

Nice hat, Leafy.

:O)

Cedar

 

[New Leaf]

Because.

Because your bells sound like this to me Cedar.

An utterance in the Heavens,
A clear, ringing voice in the Heavens,
A voice reverberating in the heavens.


Because Tibetan monks look like this

Because Hawaiian kings and priests look like this....

Because there is a reason why we are here listening together to your Tibetan singing bowls,

and discussing everything under the sun, and more.......


A Hawaiian Prayer.

Na `Aumakua- (Adapted from Hawaiian Antiquities by David Malo p.11)


Na `Aumakua mai ka la hiki a ka la kau!

Ancestors from the rising to the setting sun


Mai ka ho`oku`i a ka halawai

From the zenith to the horizon


Na `Aumakua ia Kahinakua, ia Kahina`alo

Ancestors who stand at our back and front


Ia Ka`a akau i ka lani

You who stand at our right hand

`O kiha i ka lani

A breathing in the Heavens

`Owe i ka lani

An utterance in the Heavens

Nunulu i ka lani

A clear, ringing voice in the Heavens

Kaholo i kalani

A voice reverberating in the Heavens

Eia ka pulapula a `oukou `o Ohana

Here are your decendants, your family

E malama `oukou ia makou

Safeguard us

E ulu i kalani

That we may flourish in the Heavens

E ulu i ka honua

That we may flourish on Earth

E ulu i ka pae`aina o Hawai`i

That we may flourish in the Hawaiian Islands


E ho mai i ka `ike- Grant us knowledge

E ho mai i ka ikaika- Grant us strength

E ho mai i ke akamai- Grant us intelligence

E ho mai i ka maopopo pono - Grant us understanding

E ho mai i ka `ike papalua -Grant us insight

E ho mai i ka mana Grant us power

`Amama ua noa -The prayer is lifted, it is free


BECAUSE.......We must be lifted, we must be freed,

Warrior Sisters rising.

Now I will introduce another Hawaiian who is an amazing singer and is completely fulfilled with herself. She believes in herself and projects it in her being......
Paula Fuga

This Hawaiian girl, sleeping under the stars on a beach, in an industrialized area, near the airport, with planes constantly flying over, managed to lift herself up from the dredges of life and know her meaning and her calling. She made it happen......

Let us learn to believe in ourselves sisters.

That is what I am thinking today.

Because.

leafy