Hey, Cedar, or anyone interested in FOO (Family of Origin) issues. Cedar, WHY NOW???

[Scent of Cedar *]

So, I become attractive to women and to men, it seems. Because I seem to hold onto whatever it is that I think is me

That has happened to me too, Copa. In the strangest ways imaginable. So, I don't imagine it. I just do what is there for me to do and that will have to be enough. Once, I was at a Benedictine retreat center. And whatever it was all of us were working through, one of the women asked whether she could touch me. And she placed her hands over where my uterus would be.

And it was good, Copa. But I don't know what it was, what she saw, what she felt. She seemed so pleased, Copa. If she were a predator, then I still did what was there for me to do. I did have a very bad dream that night. But here is how I think it works: I think the energy flows, in and out and in again, whatever we need, whatever we give, however we see what we see.

So, either way, I would be blessed and protected and cherished, and so would she. Because we are meant to be whole, and because we do what we can; whether we know what that is or not?

Doesn't matter.

We all are meant to be whole.

When you start from that which you feel, believe and know is a true thing...you speak with strength, you love with heart, you do with purpose.

There is a courage. A great courage that comes from this.

I have learned that, too. I don't understand it, either. It is one of those wordless things.
Things, maybe, that are too sacred for words.

Maybe that is true.

But the thing is this. An alpha leads others, that follow. I may have attracted others to me...but had no desire or ability to lead anybody anywhere.

Ha!!! I know! "Where we goin'?"

"Hmmm...I don't know."

:O)

I am a giving machine, in my work.

I am very good in my work, too. I know what I want to accomplish. Simple. It is in matters of the heart. I don't know where that is taking me or us. Flying by the seats or our pants, hearts in our throats, right?

But sometimes when we do that?

We are laughing; good, rich, healing laughter, straight from the heart.

Because we are, after all, fully capable of flying, as it turns out.

And who knows whether that is the magical, healing thing both predator and those who assume the position of prey, knew and needed, all along?

You must be flying too, Copa.

A rushing of Wind, and thousands and thousands of stars.

Little scary; nonetheless, there we are.

M sees me truly as I am in all my glory. Hesitant. Timid, at times. Often afraid.

It is so good to be nakedly vulnerable, to have that one person we allow to see us and find they champion the strength in us.

Yay.

I love that you have M.

And in the way of things? You witness and require and demand his courage too, Copa. that is how this thing works, I think. There are no heroes and yet, every one of us is a hero. I see that in the eyes of the homeless people.

Their eyes are so wise, Copa. Like the Fool on the Hill or something, they watch the world kaliedescoping around them from some place even you and I have been afraid to go. A place of utter vulnerability. But maybe, we don't need to go there. Because that already happened, to us.

Daughter and I talk alot about what it was, for her to be homeless.

She learned the most unusually incredible things.

We all did.

It sucked, truly. I was always so freaking scared for her, and for us.

The place daughter was homeless is on a lake, Copa. One of the Great Lakes. And the Native American name for that place is Spirit Lake.

So there is that sense of purpose in all things, again. That sense of some great wheel, turning and turning in joyous celebration as things are put right.

I read once that, in the Jewish mystic belief system, it is said that evil entered the picture when, in the Word that was spoken to create all that is, a small intonation was pronounced incorrectly, or was changed, immediately after it was Spoken.

Maybe that is what we are all doing, here.

Or not; or maybe there is only the meaning we give it.

I am good with that, too.

So, I become attractive to women and to men, it seems.

I just wanted to go back to this for a minute. My grands? Relate to me that everyone who is young now is all about the person, not the sex of the person, to whom they are attracted for whatever reason. This was very confusing to me. We were raised when hatred made seeing the human beneath the label impossible.

So, that is a good thing, then.

That is how racism and elitism and economic I-am-better-than-you ism can be healed. I think that is where we get to, once we are secure.

We only see one another as alive. Even if we are not human. We see animals and plants and time itself differently.

I think that is true.

I was never Alpha. Only prey. Except I never, never ceded control over who and what I was, essentially, and that quality, which you have in spades, Dear Cedar, is highly treasured and coveted.

I will post the poem for you, Copa.

Here is a beginning of it. I have to find it before I can post it for you correctly. But I think this is how it begins, that time when I was broken and broken and rebroken again so I could choose to face it, and to come together correctly.

Again, that we are here on purpose, that matters, here.

Everything every one of us does, matters in a way we cannot understand.

A magician
a Promise, unspoken
A Child
its potential, unknown

Lost
when the mirror was broken
Lost
ere the falcon be flown

(Cedar, what is thread count, and where do you find it?)

When you first are on the Watercooler page, you will see that the number of views will be listed in the area where the thread title is. The number changes, each time you refresh the page. This is true for each of the areas on this site that means so much to all of us. Sometimes? When I am posting really bad things? I take comfort in that number because there is no way my mother or my sister could possibly be coming onto that thread I am posting on as often as to account for those numbers. So then, it makes perfect sense to me that if they are?

Everyone else who knows me here will protect me from them; will protect me from the way they want me to think about myself.

"Cedar is healing!" they will say. "Stay away. This is sacred ground. It is not time for your story. Not yet. No compassion for you. Not yet."

I think I actually heard you guys saying things like that once.

Or maybe that was my imagination.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I will have ME, pieces of me, that you have touched, woken up. Which was asleep.

YAY for us Copa. And it may never, never have happened without this site, without this place where we don't have to cram vulnerability into the 45 minute therapeutic hour and go home, crying and naked and vulnerable and raw with things we have no possible way to understand.

It isn't just me, Copa. It is you, and me, and SWOT and every one of us, here and elsewhere in our lives, too.

We are meant to be whole.

All we ever needed to do was get out of our own way.

And you are very, very right too Copa, when you say that we don't need to be here in this way that we are today for our healing, for our own coming whole, again.

We already did it. It was a question of intent. And now? It is only a question of time.

If you can do it Copa, read Charles Williams' Descent Into Hell.

That is where I learned these things.

Seems he was correct.

It's such a beautifully written book, Copa. It will make your heart sing, to read as he writes. He is gone; dead now. But just look how the things he saw, and the writing he did, reached across time and distance and circumstance to heal me.

And you.

Here Copa, on purpose.

Every one of us.

If you google him? You will find a site devoted to his writings.

He was a compatriot of Tolkien and CS Lewis.

Isn't it an amazing thing that I should have come across that book as a young woman. I have read it, all my life.

You as much as slapped me in the face, Cedar. You knew the stakes. And you said them:

Because each mother here (or father) knows that true thing, Copa. When we post that we have been where a new parent is, that is what we are saying. We each have those times when someone had the words we could hear, the words that we needed.

I am filled with such gratitude that there were words there for you Copa, that you could hear. If I had not posted those words that you needed, one of the others of us would have. That seems to be how it works for all of us, here on this special place we all found, somehow, finally, where we could heal ourselves and our children and our own little places that we find where we do what we can, and believe with all our hearts that the true things we know will be enough. And between all of us, that is what we are doing.

You are as valid, as crucial a part of this as we all are, Copa.

I read your posts. They are beautiful, strengthening, courageous things. Remember when you wondered about the mother heart in you?

There.

In your posts Copa.

Undeniable proof of a generous and undeniably real and truly right thing.

You.

The part of me I had tried to kill off after my Mother died.

That is what my children brought back for me too, Copa. They needed that part of me she taught me was a fraudulent thing, was a thing that belonged to her.

I will have to tell my daughter that, and my son ~ one of these days when he is talking to me, when he is all back to himself and can hear me. Something tells me, very strongly, that my daughter already knows this true thing.

She is like me and you Copa? With a freaking bullet.

There you go. Purpose. So, we just do what is in front of us to do. That is all we ever needed to do, and we did.

And we do.

So, that's good, then.

On we go.

You know already that I am and will be healthy and strong.

I do know that true thing.

PS If this sounds like a love letter. It is.

I know. For me, too. That is how I could say, on that post when you were still so new to us, that I loved you.

I do.

Love is a powerful thing that we know so little about, now that we all have words.

You could have burnt yourself and the house down, had I not been here. In Spanish.

Ha! That is just what D H would say. In English, but with a word or two that isn't exactly right because his native language is Italian.

Set a timer next time, Copa. That is what I do. I also lose track of time when I am healing.

I am glad you are safe and well.

And Romy and Dolly and M.

I am sorry, Copa. There is just something so funny about that imagery of us posting away while the house is burning.

Wise and wary, Copa.

I have a thing in me that likes self sabotage; that likes me to feel foolish, so I will stop, so I will go back to the older, safer ways of seeing. She is trying to protect me too, of course. So, I speak the word courage to her. And I speak the word time. And I watch for her Copa, in case she should stumble, and cause us both to fall back into contempt.

But I still think it was pretty funny that you could be posting away (like I do too!) and the rice was on fire.

Yep.

I have definitely done that exact thing.

That is how I know what M's face looked like.

Even in Spanish, that comes across pretty well.

:O)

Where did any of us get the idea that we could or should have it all?

Because we are meant to.

Why else would we know that true thing in our hearts? It is just that when we have been hurt, we think we cannot get those good things that we need and deserve and want to taste the joy in, by other than nefarious means. Because, for some of us? The only truth we can hear is that we are criminals.

And everyone knows criminals deserve only to be punished; everyone knows ill gotten gains do not taste sweet.

But we cannot help our sisters to do that thing we are doing. We can believe they can do it, too.

That is all we can do.

And wish them well, and believe for them when they cannot.

In my case? That believing and all that other good stuff I just wrote?

Will have to be done from a distance.

Heh.

Nonetheless, I will hold a good intention for her, because that is a thing I can do.

So I will.

The house (almost) on the beach in a fabled city. Almost a mansion.

I don't have even one mansion. But I have been lonely, have felt bereft and deserted and stupidly wrong Copa? In some of the prettiest places imaginable, and with all of my own things, my own beautiful things that I have chosen for myself, around me.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Humans circle the wagons, literally or figuratively.

And that is the thing, the inexcusably wrong thing, our abusers who are still choosing to be abusers, even now, even when we all have grown beyond ~ when we all have survived what was and wish, with all our hearts to come together and celebrate having survived and to heal what is left ~ that is the thing fueling our abusers' energies now. They do not want us to come together, and to create and possess, sanctuary.

Snip.

Bye, mom.

Because of that bad thing you are still choosing, today.

And because now, I suspect that you knew, all along, what was happening; and that has made me suffer, very much.

And that is how I know that what I remember you did is true, did happen.

Because I suffered, and came through it.

I see you.

I see you back.

Startling clarity of vision, just like in the poetry.

So that's good, then.

Not to be too repetitive here, but ~ on we go.

One begins to want more...in her case I think it was something to do with sexual love

That makes really good sense. That she would want to go back to that time, to that young woman time, when all things were possible, for her. Maybe that explains a piece of the fear of aging, of the loss of that secret power we could always have gone back to that is gone, now. I see so many people, flowing in and out of that gallery where I volunteer. Like a river they feel, Copa. There are women we have seen who have been so surgically altered that they look like dolls, like fragile, beautiful dolls, in a way. They are beautiful, but not in that strong, careless, legitimate way a young woman is beautiful. And I see the most amazing women too Copa, who somehow are right where they need to be, living from the heart and in full possession of themselves, somehow, in a way I am not, yet.

That is why I love that gallery.

It is a just right thing, for me.

There is a beautiful garden in the back, where the artist plays with all the things she thinks about. One day? A woman came in dressed in a long skirt, and with that apron of gold coins belly dancing women wear. And she danced for the artist, near the water. And the artist whipped out her phone to record that beautiful woman, who was not beautiful and then, in her dancing, she was.

And the artist showed it to me.

So now I know what that looks like too, when a woman is in full possession of her own self.

It was beautiful.

It was beautiful in that way that Latina woman on the motorcycle was beautiful that day that I saw her, Copa.

Like the way I am very sure, however harshly you describe Copa here, you look, too.

Maybe Copa, that is how you look in your heart.

She was so beautifully free, Copa.

Man, that was a pretty thing that I got to see, too.

:O)

And began to justify ANYTHING at all she had to do to get what she wanted. Because after all in her dreams it was already hers.

Or because she was chasing something that was gone.

And it's right there in her heart, of course.

But that is not where she is looking.

As I write this I wonder how it sounds, what we sound like to others. Like Desperate Housewives, or that Paris Hilton show, Rich girls in the country or something. Or some Reality Show where people think they are going for the gold in life and they have everything all wrong. Just all wrong.

Well, that's the thing. We all think stuff is the answer. Really, stuff is very cool to have indeed. And the truth is that we all need a certain amount of stuff to survive.

That is a very true thing.

If I had all the money in the world, though...what I would really do is something entirely different than what I think, at first, that I would want to do. My Tai Chi instructor sent me a video of a sailboat expedition to the Galapagos Island chain. And it was filmed so beautifully from the perspective of the Captain. I would like to do that. But here is the thing. I would have to be present enough to appreciate what I was seeing ~ to the wonder of the animals living there together, and to the sun against the sails, and to the stars on the water at night.

And I can do that from right here. From right wherever I am. But only if I am present to it.

And that is what we are working toward. And that is what was stolen from us by our abusers. And maybe it is true that presence is the thing we all are trying to capture ~ the essence of ourselves seeing what is there, what was always there, the whole time, right where we were. Because we were there, and because we were seeing.

Ooops. Out of my depth again a little.

But I think that might be true.

Plus, this is what I know about stuff: It all has to be cleaned or repaired or replaced or updated. And at this ending part of my time here...I don't exactly see the value of stuff that helps me feel like I must be something more worthwhile than how I feel, or who I am in the heart of me or something.

I saw that lesson to, when I looked into the eyes of that homeless lady who waited with my daughter that day when we brought her home.

But I don't know yet what I saw.

I just know I saw it.

And that is enough, for now.

A mystery. Some curious something I don't understand. But it's there, alright.

But that is how it was for my poor sister and I. We felt like nothing and nobody, unless we achieved titles, or stuff. That is the real story.

Well, no...in a way, that was as good a way to do this as any. I think that is how we deepen, once we have been around long enough to achieve our dreams and so, lose our illusions. Then, we look at everything again with from our changed perspectives. But I think we have to be very brave to admit, I don't know. To stand up anyway, when everything is gone. And all at once, just like that, we don't know where we are or which way is up, anymore.

So, we just have to sit there, and tell ourselves that true thing. Then, it begins to seem to us that we must be where we are meant to be, or else, why would we be here.

That is what this part feels like to me.

That is why, in preparation for the visits of my daughter and her children, I am just going to be quiet and do nothing and think nothing and just be here. It is the same feeling I had when we thought she was dying. Just like, all of time in an instant, or something.

And everything spinning out from that point.

All the stars and everything.

Maybe that is the secret in the Japanese No plays. Where the actor steps onto the stage and does nothing, his face masked, his talent to display that wordless thing, that point from which everything spins out forever.

So the one true thing became the defect. For me.

Yes! That is just what I was trying to say.

I just needed like, ten thousand words to describe it, while you needed only ten.

But mine have a kind of rhythm to them that I enjoyed.

However we get there, as long as we get there, right?

Yes!

:O)

Copa,

Whole, healthy and strong.

Yes to this, too. It doesn't surprise me, though. I always knew that about you. I saw it in your posts. I am just believing for you until you can believe it again for yourself. There was a time you did know that Copa. There was a time when I knew that, too. That is the thing our abusers found so irresistable.

They should have looked within, too.

But they were too scared, and it was easier to take it from us.

We were defenseless, and so new to the world.

Cedar

 

[InsaneCdn]

They do not want us to come together, and to create and possess, sanctuary.

Thanks.
Yes, that makes sense. Explains a whole lot of things.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

He cried more than once during the interview, remembering the trauma and loss of his friend. And it was okay

What a beautiful thing for you to have seen, there in his story, Copa.

Our relationship had not been enough for either one of us and just plain hard, too.

That's okay. Brene Brown writes that we humans are hardwired for challenge, right from the moments of our conceptions.

You did well.

So did your mom; I find it amazing that you could look into her eyes and stay present for her, Copa.

I wonder whether you understand that your are processing your own pain and hers, too?

She gave it to you, Copa. All her brokenness and rage and gratitude and sorrow.

And you took it from her Copa, that gift that she gave you.

Because you know, and she knew, that you are strong enough.

Nonetheless, it was a heavy thing. So, you went to bed.

Anyone would, who had to harbor her strength for the things that matter.

Your son awakened you from where your attention was, then. Maybe Copa, he is telling you it is time to come back to him, to be you, to be present again for the work he came into your life, and the work you came into his life, to do.

We never know, any of us, just what time it really is.

Or how much time, out of all time, there is.

But we don't need to know those things. All we need to do is what is there, in front of us to do.

Just that one little thing, one small step, or one giant leap, at a time.

Just that; nothing more.

Alone in hard decisions, hard feelings

These things seem only to happen when we are alone with the core of the thing.

Maybe that is the only way we could see it? To take it and take it and take it in, so that another could make what sense of it there was to be taken and oh, so gratefully, know we hold safe the rest?

I don't know. But I do know that's pretty scary. To know that we do that, I mean. Nonetheless, we are doing it. So, there's that, then.

We'll probably just keep doing it. But maybe, we could have a richer sense of compassion for ourselves, now that we know that.

We are all only just human, only just human people too, trying to figure out how all this goes together.

Which does not mean that I am going to have compassion for my mom.

Not yet.

Missing her while knowing that I had chosen distance from her most of my life, seemed impossible to surmount.

True. But I did not distance myself as completely as I should have, from my own mother, or from my sister. So I created emotional barriers to the intimacy I was so determined to create. And I was right to do what I did Copa and so were you. If either of us had been totally consumed by whatever it was that our mothers could not turn away from, there would have been no one, now, strong enough to know, and to see and to hear, and to remain present.

That could be true.

The thing is, here, that I got at least for a minute or two, is that I am Tracy Morgan, too. I have been recovering from trauma as has he. He deserves respect, and gets it. I do too.

That things that fell us that we cannot get up from. We deserve respect. I deserve respect. Comparing myself to others or to who I have been before is not just irrelevant, it is just plain cruel. Tracy Morgan is expected and wants to return to his life before. But nobody expects it to be just like that. And I don't think he is expected to be just like he was.

I am so happy for you about this, Copa.

About this true thing that you know, now.

There it is again, that whole purpose thing; that miracles happening all around us, every minute, every day, all the time.

How cool is that?

How freaking cool is that.

The functioning old one, or this new one?

Both are truly functional, Copa. Just on different levels.

So, Tracy Morgan calls upon me to find respect and heart, for myself. Life is not just a one way street. We go back and forth, it seems.

This whole thing is getting a little bit exciting. Even I am curious what new person will get up from the bed. What will she do and where will she go? I'll let you know.

It is exciting, isn't it. But it seems to me that we don't get to know. It just seems to me that we do that one little thing and then, the next.

It's like a kaliedescope, in that way. No pattern we can pick out because everything is always and forever changing. So, we just stop, every once in awhile, to enjoy the patterning of it. Then? We forget that we know that.

I am stuck in italics again.

Grrr....

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Thanks.
Yes, that makes sense. Explains a whole lot of things.

Hello there, good morning, I am so glad you are here!

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

"I will this morning climb up in spirit to the high places, bearing with me the hopes and the miseries of my mother; and there, upon all that in the world of human flesh is now about to be born or to die beneath the setting sun I will call down the Fire."

Pierre Teilhard de Chardin
Hymn of the Universe

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

"Someday, after we have mastered the winds, the waves, the tides and gravity, we shall harness for God the energies of love. Then, for the second time in the history of the world, man will have discovered Fire."

Pierre Tielhard de Chardin


***

So here, as I always do before I post something spooky, is something very beautiful. This is the conversation within us, long ago. Before we were incarnated, perhaps. If a person were comfortable thinking along those lines, I mean.

This one is mine, too. Written years and years ago, before I stopped writing.

Tomorrow will find me
a prisoner
Locked from sight, from scent and sound
of you

Time measured not in hours
but in decades

So come near to me, now ~
come gaze upon those brilliant, icy stars....
Then let this be the memory, deep engraved
on both our hearts

Etched
into both our fallible brains

So that when I return
years hence
Though your beauty then be spent ~
though my face be a caricature of the face
before you now

Yet will I know you
by the stars...

By those brilliant, icy stars
shining undiminished in your eyes.

 

[BusynMember]

That things that fell us that we cannot get up from. We deserve respect. I deserve respect. Comparing myself to others or to who I have been before is not just irrelevant, it is just plain cruel. Tracy Morgan is expected and wants to return to his life before. But nobody expects it to be just like that. And I don't think he is expected to be just like he was.

You are a survivor, Copa. You have my respect for the person you are, for the accomplishments you obviously have had and will have in the future, and you have tons of love and caring in your heart. If you are in a bad place and may not respect yourself right now, t hat does not mean others don't see your amazing value.

 

[Copabanana]

So did your mom; I find it amazing that you could look into her eyes and stay present for her, Copa.

Me too.

Near the end, I asked her if she loved me.

Yes. So, much.

Do you know how much I love you, Mama? Yes.

Mama, do you really, really know how much I love you?

She waited, maybe 45 seconds. All the time looking into my eyes. (She was a strong, strong woman who to the moment of her death never lost her will.)

After the interminably long 45 seconds.

Yes.

What was going through her head during nearly a minute I did not ask. I wanted to, but I did not ask. But I wondered.

Was it the old tapes, like if you loved me so much why did you not see me or talk to me for so many years? Or if you loved me so much why didn't you do what other daughters do? That had been my mother's voice.

What I like to think is that in the 45 seconds her mind was traveling through our lifetime together, and maybe before...and kissing each and every sorrowful and angry time to make it better. And maybe she did.

But I do not think so. That was not who she was.

But I can imagine it was so. And maybe that will be enough to forgive myself.

When I went to the hospital to take her home with me for what I knew then would be the last time. She was so close to death she was almost a vegetable.

I met the gurney in the hallway carrying her towards the medical van.

I had spent the last nights wailing through the night and drinking myself into a stupor and wailing, more. I knew then my mother was going. And that I would be bringing her home, to my home to die. (Why am I putting myself through this pain now, again?) And I was afraid.

And I knew it was too late. For me. All of the love and all of the regret of a lifetime was there. And it was too late.

And I embraced her tiny body on the gurney. No teeth. Barely alive. Still beautiful.

Mama, Mama, I'm here, it's me to take you home, Mama. It's me.

And I got no response from her.

So I hugged her more tightly, what was left of her.

Mama, I'm here to take you home, I repeated. Mama. Mama. It's me. Mama, I love you.

Still vacant. Motionless.

And I kissed her on the lips. Like Sleeping Beauty. I did.

And she kissed me back. As sure as I breathe, she kissed me back.

And the nurses at the station laughed and smiled. Joyously. They had seen the kiss. That my mother almost a corpse, had kissed me back.

She was dead within the 24 hours. I will spare you that for now.

But my mother kissed me on the lips, almost from the grave. And I smile, now. With happiness. How audacious is that?

I gave my mother all the love in the world at the end and received from her, in turn, the same.

Because you know, and she knew, that you are strong enough. Nonetheless, it was a heavy thing. So, you went to bed.

Yes. And I know I did a good, good job. And it was worth every minute in bed since then. I now know. Because I did a good job for my Mother. And myself. And so did M.

If either of us had been totally consumed by whatever it was that our mothers could not turn away from, there would have been no one, now, strong enough

Yes. This is true. I think my Mother knew it too. And I think she forgave me. But I never asked for forgiveness. It would not have been right.

"I will this morning climb up in spirit to the high places, bearing with me the hopes and the miseries of my mother

Yes. Thank you, Cedar.

I climbed up in spirit to high places, bearing with me the hopes and miseries of my mother because I loved her and because that is who I am. I am proud.

 

[Copabanana]

They want us enslaved, like a captive audience or...or something.

I think of the butterfly in a jar, Cedar. Killed with a cotton ball saturated in alcohol.

And no wonder we were afraid, if we sensed the fate that was in store for us:

Only that agitated, fear based hyper-awareness around everything having to do with them.

It was never them we were afraid of. It was how we would see ourselves, it was who we would believe ourselves to be, once they got done with us

Butterfly dead in jar. See above.

And they had no freaking right, not in any reality real or imagined, to reach in and mess up your response to your child.

Copa? I put your father in my saddlebag on the Conduct Disorders motorcycle, too.

Thank you. But I hope in a different pocket than with my Mother. I love my Mother. I almost hate my father.

You could be willing, in somewhere in your heart you have no access to, to carry her pain and the terror of death for her.

Yes. I think that is true. Was true. And I did. But we are almost done with that now. And there is only love.

And I went in Copa, and he was ~ it was like his face had been beatifically transformed. As though there were the most beautiful light Copa, shining right down on him.

Because I saw that light on his face when there was no light in the room.

Like the kiss, Cedar. Like the kiss.

So, somehow, that figures into this whole thing with your mom.

Yes, it does. Thank you, Cedar.

What is that line that Willie Loman says in Death of a Salesman, my favorite play?

"Respect must be paid." And it was. And it was worth it. Thank you.

 

[Copabanana]

I was really so afraid of that phone call.

Or that visit from one or, a thousand times worse, both of them.

OK. I am like this too. And it's got to stop. If I have asserted myself, and I fear somebody (that I associate with shaming) will be mad, I am afraid of their rebuke. I fear that they will say something to retaliate that will destroy me. Totally, completely out of proportion. Like soul death.

She said there is a phrase for moms like me, who are so enamored of their children they forget they are women, forget they were women first, before their children ever came into their lives.

Is this bad? If it is I'm in big trouble.

to go, or to go on the hero's quest that is a life well lived. Those who stay shrivel and grow smaller and more afraid and more prone to fear. Those who go may die trying.

I see your daughter here.

And of how it could have come to be that she is as she is, after all she has been through.

But then she would tell you that with all she has been through she has been searching for her true self and destiny, there. And it had to be lived, for her to become who she was meant to be.

Us too.

I am like, this mysterious person to myself, all filled with sunshine or really dark water.

Totally entertained with myself.

You have become your own muse.

And I found love for my daughter and my son too, even when they were being rabidly offensive people I was ashamed to admit I was acquainted with, let alone mother to.

Cedar, even when they were in front of your face, as they were?

M sounds like my D H. I am happy for you, Copa.

Thank you Cedar. He is a good man. He can be very cranky, though.

I am like 2 days behind answering your posts. And this thrills me. It is like knowing you have 15 more books left in a good mystery series. I am reading the Victoria Thompson Gaslight Series, which I feel that way about.

PS. I am still strong and whole, Cedar.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Mama, I'm here to take you home, I repeated. Mama. Mama. It's me. Mama, I love you.

And I kissed her on the lips. Like Sleeping Beauty. I did.

And she kissed me back. As sure as I breathe, she kissed me back.

She was dead within the 24 hours. I will spare you that for now

I gave my mother all the love in the world at the end and received from her, in turn, the same.

I love this story.

We all will die. Because it happens to every one of us, to every thing around us, it loses the special horror of endings while retaining the special horror of endings and we don't know what to do with it. So, to me, it isn't the death, it's the dying. Once the death is done, there is nothing from the body. Truly, clay.

But oh, Copa, the dying. What it can mean that someone is willing to stay present, to be right there, to see with you as you meet that unavoidable thing that is, after all and impossibly, happening to you.

I love the eye to eye between mother and daughter as the mother enters the mystery first. I love the idea of your having been there to shepherd the mother through the portals, loving her so strong and giving her courage and seeing her; and making her present and seeing her through.

You did so well, Copa!

And so did your mother.

I read somewhere that at the touch of Eternity, we will know; that the patterns make the tapestry.

And that the tapestry is a beautiful thing, rich with color.

I hang onto that, when nothing makes sense.

But I never asked for forgiveness. It would not have been right.

There was nothing to forgive.

There were choices to make, and you made them. And so did your mother; and so did your sister. Life is very hard.

But rich with meaning.

So they say.

I think of the butterfly in a jar, Cedar. Killed with a cotton ball saturated in alcohol.

I have the strong sense that my sister does not want me sealed in a time warp. She seems to need to dominate or superceed me. And she seems to want me to know that.

Here is a story.

My mother was here for the summer. Not at my house, at her house some twenty minutes away. I was attending doctor or dentist appointments with her, spending the night or the evening with her once a week, and calling her around the same time each night to talk for as long as she wanted to talk ~ about her day or her concerns or maybe just to laugh, or whatever.

Just giving her that time, every day at the end of the day, so she would not be alone with her thoughts, so she would not feel lonely.

I actually do like my mom. She is bright, well informed, and can be a joy to talk to. But she loves to play games, and she can be very cruel and it is difficult to know what to do with that.

And D H was hating that because it cut into the time I am supposed to be enjoying the evening with him, but I did it anyway.

So it was like a balancing act.

And one day my sister called, and her entire attitude was so snotty you would not believe it. That my brother was worthless as far as caring for our mother went, that I should be checking up on him more, and that I should be doing more myself. And I didn't really have anything to say to that because in a way, I thought I should have been, too. It seemed to me that my mom should have been able to stay here overnight, to have dinner here with us every day ~ essentially, that she should have been able to live with us when she was here for the summer, or to access us and our home, free and easy, and that we should all have been welcoming her and helping her adjust to the loss of my father.

But D H did not see our situation in any of the same rosy lights that seemed to shine through it for me. And my mom would so often use that time that we gave her, would use those efforts we made to create family, to biatch about my grandmother or to run my father down or to run us down. And I have that hyper-awareness thing going on where my mother is concerned.

And she did draw back her arm, pretending she was going to hit me, that time when my granddaughters and I were at her house, so that is the flavor of things with my mother.

So it's all ~ none of the freaking pieces fit.

D H has been detesting my mother for such a long time.

She does do the strangest things.

And it is so hard for me to know that, because I have that thing going on about "That is my mother."

So, I think my sister wants to be above the other sibs in that way ~ in that caring for mom way; maybe, in that loving mom better way? I don't know. But I have the feeling she enjoys topping everyone instead of just being together. I have the feeling she would enjoy it less if she were an only child, or that she would play some very nasty games indeed with her parents, if she were the only child.

I think she is playing a nasty game regarding the man who wanted to marry my mother and take her away.

So I don't think my sister necessarily wants me stopped, the way you would stop a butterfly in a bottle.

She wants me ground into nothing, and dancing attendance around her. I always feel that I've ignored her, or that I've forgotten to help her feel special. That I've...that she feels that any attention to me has been taken from her. Or any attention anyone gets has been taken from her. Or any good thing in any of our lives.

And we're all just supposed to accept that, except that I won't. I don't like that exclusion thing.

There is no conversation with my sister. I mean, I can anticipate a visit, or I can go to her house, and there never is a conversation.

Somehow, there never is.

It's like she would devour and destroy and leave behind frightened slaves, or frightened and shamed slaves ~ people who would only see themselves as she would like to see them.

Or something.

That seems to be the name of the game, in our family. If I were going to name an essential conflict, that would be it. That feeling. That is what happens, and that is why nothing ever makes sense. This sister will break up the family into factions (how could she have that kind of power?), allying herself with the more powerful faction; hiding in shadows and pulling strings with something like Machievellian precision.

Here is another story.

So, my father was in the hospital for whatever it was. He'd had surgery. And my sister had come home, too. And it was the strangest thing, to see the way she treated me. I am a freaking baccalaureate-prepared registered nurse and blah, blah, blah. You all know the story of how I chose that school, of the prestige of that school, and of why I went back to school, and to that particular school, in the first place. And always for me, where my sister is concerned, is the question of whether I hurt her and that is why she feels she has to do these things. My sister...has what she has, now. One time, D H and I visited my sister and her husband. It was the first visit after their marriage. And after breakfast, the husband pulled out the cutest little pocket notebook that was full of ideas for things we might like to do. Among them was seeing the ballet in the large city near where they live. And you guys know how I feel about ballet. But my sister put a kibosh on it. So we stayed on their property and worked in the yard.

And there was nothing in the fridge. And we went out for dinner and of course, D H and I paid because we were, after all, staying at their house. And the next day there was a family dinner for the D H family, and suddenly there was food.

And D H saw it and was extremely offended about it. But D H has always said he sees my sister. Now, he says his muzzle is off.

He hopes my sister does come to our house. He can't wait. Which is al little scary because, always and forever, I don't want her to be hurt.

And D H has a mouth on him you would not believe. But he has curbed himself for my sake again and again and he lights up when he thinks she may try to force herself, now.

And I just say, "You are right. Your muzzle is off."

And that makes D H very, very righteously happy.

Back to the first story.

And my sister seemed determined to know more than me, to move faster than me, to be more stridently vocal than me, when we were all there in the hospital for my father. And she had been present when someone in her D H family was in a nursing home. And she was very sure that, just as suckers were the thing that man had found comforting, so suckers were the thing my father needed.

It sounds so silly now, trying to describe it. It was one of the weirdest experiences of my life. At one point, when we'd gone to buy the suckers she insisted he needed? (Not that the suckers were a bad idea? Except that they were because this was a person recently out of surgery and still prone to nausea. There are special mouth moistening sponges made with glycerin for exactly the purpose for which my sister wanted the suckers for our father. But she wanted him to have suckers because she had learned suckers were good for people who are dying and have dry mouths and cannot drink.

And she would not hear me.

Listen to this part, guys:

So I went with her, to get them. She did not want me to go get them, because then the credit for the suckers would be mine. I think this is actually true. And she did not want to go get them herself, because that would have left me alone with my father and my mother.

And we practically ran all the way to that place in the hospital where suckers were sold, going faster and faster.

?

Of course the suckers made him nauseous and of course, we used the glycerin swabs instead.

So that is enough about my sister this morning. I am fortunate to have this site. I am forever forgetting what I know about my situation where this sister is concerned.

It has to be that mothering her thing? Does it?

Well, what it is is that I never do like to see the ugliness in it. I can't believe it could be what it looks like.

But if I were going to predict what will happen next, it is that my sister will dump my mother because she thinks my mom has no one now but my brother. My sister is very upset that the man continues to want to marry my mother. This is the sister who told my mother that, now that my mom was staying with my sister in the Winter, my sister finally had a mother and my mother finally had the chance to be her mother. And pretty much, that my sister deserved this. And that we all did, because we are trying to make a family.

What a crock.

What a family.

Nonetheless, my mother continues to go back there, every winter.

So, I can safely turn away from all of it.

But I loved your story, Copa.

Butterfly dead in jar. See above.

Oh. You are right, Copa. Dead in some transparent thing so she can see me, trapped and dead.

Huh.

You are exactly correct.

Ew.

But surely this cannot be true and blah, blah, blah. What in the world is the matter with me?!?

Thank you. But I hope in a different pocket than with my Mother. I love my Mother. I almost hate my father.

She was in a different holding cell then, Copa. No bars. Like house arrest for members of the Royal family. Somewhere lovely, in that English country house where we all were while we figured this out.

Having tea.

Earl Grey.

Fine china; white dinner napkins.

She is wearing a scarlet scarf of some sort around her neck, Copa. Very expensive; beautifully scarlet. She chose that.

Vibrantly powerful, still.

Yes. I think that is true. Was true. And I did. But we are almost done with that now. And there is only love.

Isn't that something, how it always works out that way. That must be why I told my sister that I did love her; that I loved her too much to do this the way she insists it will be.

I have a little FOG going on where my sister is concerned. Denial, then. That is the feel of denial.

At the touch of Eternity, right?

OK. I am like this too. And it's got to stop. If I have asserted myself, and I fear somebody (that I associate with shaming) will be mad, I am afraid of their rebuke. I fear that they will say something to retaliate that will destroy me. Totally, completely out of proportion. Like soul death.

Well, those would be the shamings, the toxic shamings, we still carry. That is why we are doing this. To undo that; to see through our own eyes forever, and never through the eyes of the abuser, any more.

Is this bad? If it is I'm in big trouble.

Ha! D H would agree with you. He said that woman was exactly correct. But then, D H has never been a mother. It's like we are supposed to somehow balance both things. I think that would be so remarkably fulfilling a thing, to take joy together in the family both the man and the woman have created. It is an impossible thing, when the child is endangered.

Do you know the story of Isis, Copa?

Her child, a son, had been dismembered. With single minded purpose, she continues to search for that last piece of her son to this very day.

It is the organs of regeneration that are missing.

I see your daughter here.

That is how she sees herself too, Copa.

It is a very hard thing to be mother to children determined to continue that quest, whatever it costs their poor mothers.

Oy vey.

But then she would tell you that with all she has been through she has been searching for her true self and destiny, there. And it had to be lived, for her to become who she was meant to be.

Us too.

That is what they do say, those stinkers. I will say this: it certainly has been a riveting journey.

Oy, as we certainly do say at my house, vey.

Like they couldn't have just been a doctor or something.

So I could, for once in my freaking life, show off.

You have become your own muse.

Ha! Copa? No one else will listen to me.

Cedar, even when they were in front of your face, as they were?

Yes. The only time I did not feel that was when my daughter endangered her own children. That was when I entertained believing those stupid psychiatric diagnoses. Now that she is better?

I only believe them a little bit. Like a nightmare where someone you love is in trouble and you know screaming is not going to wake them up.

So...so, Copa? You take to your bed.

And you dream furiously, fervently, hoping to get to the end of the story so you will at least know what it was before it happens, and becomes irrevocable.

With our son...I was shaken loose when his face changed. There was hatred and disrespect and certainty in his eyes that he would have what he wanted. D H came back, and that was the end of that story.

And when I realized our son was interacting with me, with his own darn mother, in a typically abusive pattern. I was like, WTF.

So then I stood up.

So, that was good, then.

Sorry for the italics, Copa. I am stuck in them.

He is a good man. He can be very cranky, though.

So can my D H. He is strong, way strong. A very well-mothered man can be a pain in the arse.

:O)

Cedar

I like knowing there will be a continuing conversation too, Copa.

I am reading Ruby, by Cynthia Bond.

In karate yesterday? The instructor said, casual as anything: "Give me 15 sit ups, 15 push ups, and 15 jumping jacks." So, by the time I managed to get my mouth closed, I did all that.

Not only did I live through the class and also, make it through the night? But I am not even sore, this morning.

But I am definitely going to practice exercising. He had those who had been in the class longer?

Do twenty of each thing.

Cheesh.

I mean "HAI!"

Cheesh, Copa.

My gi is black, with a dragon on the back.

Very classy.

:O)

He is a totally fierce instructor, very into killing points on the human body and winning our black belts and trustworthiness and not fighting, but winning. Like, when you need to fight?

Decimate your opponent and walk away.

So that's something new, for me. My other classes have been about excellent technique, and about underlying philosophy. We read ancient Chinese philosophers as part of ever Tai Chi class. I have been taking those classes for six years, every Winter.

I like it, though. This new instructor's attitude, I mean.

Copa and everyone reading along?

There are children in this class I am in now. Little kids, and they are so amazing. I am going to bring my grands and my daughter too, if she thinks she can do it, when they come to visit this summer.

Isn't that an extraordinary thing. I will be very different I think, with this instructor as my teacher.

Here is an interesting thing. This instructor says the real Okinawan masters laugh at the way Americans are so impressed with Bruce Lee. They say, "Overcome your opponent in thirty seconds? It should only take two seconds."

My sister had best watch her p's and q's.

 

[Copabanana]

wearing a scarlet scarf of some sort around her neck, Copa. Very expensive; beautifully scarlet.

First, the most important thing. My Mother would never wear a scarf (I would.) My mother was only 5'. While she loved scarves she looked slightly ridiculous with a scarf, especially a long one. So, maybe that is why she chose the scarf, no longer encumbered by the constraints of space and time, or fashion. OK. I see it, now. And maybe she got taller.

D H has been detesting my mother for such a long time.

Cedar, I am really struggling to put together your family constellation.

With your nuclear family, I think I get it. husband seems so clear and strong and direct and true. And so does your daughter. Your son is murky to me, but only because you write so little about him. I would love to know more if you feel like sharing.

Your Mother I seem to get, and your sister, I guess. So, I ask myself, what am I struggling with?

I think it is with your sister. I am writing this for the second time because again much of wrote got eaten. I enter text that the program seems not to like and it jumps up and eats it. I took a long break and will try again.

So the word that comes to mind for your sister is caprichosa which means something like capricious, willful, shallow, flighty, tempermental.

Your sister does not seem to think things through, and is reactive rather than responsive. And while you describe her as plotting and undermining she does not seem to act in a coordinated way in her self-interest. Or does she seem to have a set of core beliefs or a sense, really, of who she is and what she needs. Rather her motivations seem to arise more from feelings that are negative, such as envy, rage, jealousy, primary among them...than anything solid.

I am especially unnerved by the idea that she would throw over your mother, not because I do not get that such things happen, but that I do not understand the underlying reason.

My sister abandoned my mother (and me) for her last 10 months of her life, not returning phone calls, refusing to give even moral support, to say goodbye or anything at all.

How do I understand this? As either vengeance or fear and weakness. Or maybe both. In another post I will explain the vengeance part, as it is not pertinent here.

In the case of your sister, I am wondering why, you think your sister might do the same.

Maybe it is because I am completely clueless, still, in understanding our sisters.

And I guess I am missing something basic about your Mom, too. (Forgive me, Cedar. I do not want to dis-respect your Mother. And really do not.)

When I try to envision your mother I do not see the malice and premeditation I see from your sister. Meanness, yes. Cruelty, possibly. And I see a vain, self-centered, self-satisfied, and self-preoccupied woman. (Or am I projecting here, the image of my Mom, I may be.) But not like your sister.

Is this because I am viewing the two through the lens of my own feelings about my own mother and sister? I do not know.

But it really is extraordinary to me how fleshed out are the images I have of your husband and daughter. And your Baklava granddaughter comes through, too. I guess love speaks volumes, as they say.

When I first learned your husband was Italian, I adopted an image of of Anthony
Bourdain, who is Jewish and French, but since I think he is about the loveliest man I can think if, I bestowed his visage on your husband. After learning he looked like a pirate I shifted to a buff and younger Luciano Pavarotti, with silver hair. Am I even close?

if I were going to predict what will happen next, it is that my sister will dump my mother because she thinks my mom has no one now but my brother.

This confuses me. It seems contrary to everything so far. I mean, a few posts back she was trying to love your mother into shape...and now she is going to dump her? How would that help her, how would she benefit? Is it vengeance? What would be her motive?

And why does your sister hate so much this suitor of your Mom's? Is it money??
Control? Is it social class? Your Dad?

Does she want each of you to be hers alone to discard or destroy or embrace as she sees fit, when she wants, if at all? And why?

And always for me, where my sister is concerned, is the question of whether I hurt her and that is why she feels she has to do these things.

This is the nugget of it, is it not? That is the way my sister justifies all of the evil she does. She feels hurt. She feels wronged. Therefore, anything, anything at she justifies thus.

But I have seen that she does this with everyone and everything, feeling herself entitled to destroy, because she feels hurt or sees that her interests have been hurt or threaten to be. She really does not care who is her target. She is insulated completely from remorse or indeed a second thought at all. At least appears so to me.

But the thing that really has to go is your sense that you may have harmed her. To me, this is a displacement.

I am curious how you got first the idea that it might have been something in you, an act by you, that caused her hurt?

Of course we older siblings have natural resentment towards a new baby, particularly a sister, I would think. After all, by existing and needing so much care, they robbed of us of the bit of attention and love we did receive.

So, there could be the legacy of this early resentment in you that you fear could have been responsible for her hurt.

You must understand that nothing about you or who you were or are...in any way, is really responsible for your sister's malice and envy. You know this. This is who your sister, is Cedar. If you existed or not, she would be so.

Your sister seems a narcissist, Cedar, like my sister. I know you resist the idea of diagnoses but in the case of our sisters, attention must be paid, because of the dangers.

Narcissistic Personality Disorder DSM 5, I think.

A pervasive pattern of grandiosity (in fantasy or behavior), need for admiration, and lack of empathy, beginning by early adulthood and present in a variety of contexts, as indicated by five (or more) of the following:

(1) has a grandiose sense of self-importance (e.g., exaggerates achievements and talents, expects to be recognized as superior without commensurate achievements)

(2) is preoccupied with fantasies of unlimited success, power, brilliance, beauty, or ideal love

(3) believes that he or she is "special" and unique and can only be understood by, or should associate with, other special or high-status people (or institutions)

(4) requires excessive admiration

(5) has a sense of entitlement, i.e., unreasonable expectations of especially favorable treatment or automatic compliance with his or her expectations

(6) is interpersonally exploitative, i.e., takes advantage of others to achieve his or her own ends

(7) lacks empathy: is unwilling to recognize or identify with the feelings and needs of others

(8) is often envious of others or believes that others are envious of him or her

(9) shows arrogant, haughty behaviors or attitudes.

The thing that makes this even harder, is that as Narcissists age and they have not received the rewards and appreciation to which they feel they are entitled they can begin to turn sociopathic, as has my sister. They come to feel justified in actively intervening to right wrongs, using whatever means necessary, to gain control over others and things to proactively right wrongs, gain what they deserve, whether rewards, admiration, resources.

Look at these, with the above in mind:

But I have the feeling she enjoys topping everyone

that she feels that any attention to me has been taken from her. Or any attention anyone gets has been taken from her.

It's like she would devour and destroy and leave behind frightened slaves, or frightened and shamed slaves ~ people who would only see themselves as she would like to see them.

And my sister seemed determined to know more than me, to move faster than me, to be more stridently vocal than me, when we were all there in the hospital for my father.

And D H saw it and was extremely offended about it. But D H has always said he sees my sister. Now, he says his muzzle is off.

I understand this so well. Because this involved food, and the willful withholding of food, it crossed the line into abuse, I think.

Once M and I were treated such. Not by a family member. I was enraged. I cannot remember a time I felt so set up. To be invited to a home to eat and refused food, is something really, really sick.

When I was a girl I spent a lot of time in a best girl friends home. Because my mother did not want me at home when she was there and when she was not there, I would be alone. But it was never my house, my family. I was always on the outside, even though I was called the fifth daughter by the Mom. There was a lot of pathology in the family. Ugly memories.

But the thing I want to say here is that one time, there were cookies cooling on a rack in the kitchen. And I wanted one so badly. And after a while I couldn't stand it. And I ate one.

The Mother ridiculed me and berated me on and on about how every single one of those cookies had been destined for a specific person or purpose and I had no right to touch them at all, especially without asking. But of course, I had not had the confidence to ask, because I was just a poor neighbor child with nowhere else to go.

I was humiliated because she meant to humiliate and shame me and that is what your sister wanted to do to you and husband.

And I am especially resentful of her, for him, because the picture I have of him, is that there is nothing in his character that would call for that mistreatment. Nothing. In this he was a complete innocent. Neither he nor you deserved that disrespect. I find myself thinking I would never let her in my home again, but of course that may not be true.

And why in the world would she be so disordered to want to hurt him? Except I really do get it, for all my wanting to deny it.

My sister first met M in the hospital, when my Mom was hospitalized for the first time and we were still in the city where she lived.

Now remember my sister thinks she is important and powerful and upper class and maybe even sexy (not.) So, she meets M.

So my sister feels really, really superior to us. Because M's biggest mistake is to have aligned himself with me. And, together, we are to my sister no more than slime.

So I cannot believe what she did. She starts to try to stare M down. And worse. She ran her eyes up and down his body like he was a piece of meat. To debase him. (Good luck) Like thinking that with her power she can make him give up his power, and humiliate him. And turn him into a thing.

Big mistake.

So M did not turn away his gaze. Why would he? Until she had to turn away.

My G-d. I was so ashamed of my sister.

So, I really, really get out of control sisters especially when they come across men with huevos. Especially when those huevos happen to be with their sisters.

So, here I am back to withholding food: In the most basic and essential way your sister not only disrespected you and your husband, she tried to invalidate you, a kind of primal insult through the withholding of food. Intentionally. Deliberately. She tried to humiliate you. There was sadism here. This was an invitation to degradation. I am surprised husband will go anywhere near her.

I really do not get why this disturbs me so. I guess it was because of that girl who had no family to go to, really, except for the kindness of strangers. Or not.

It is a very hard thing to be mother to children determined to continue that quest, whatever it costs their poor mothers.

So often I think of the mothers of explorers, like Columbus and all of them, to try to find community of suffering mothers. How could they stand it I ask myself? (That was before this board.)

In my own family, my maternal grandparents left Europe, forever, never again seeing their parents again. My grandmother never saw again her mother, after she was 11 years old.

She was forever scarred by the loss. I ask myself about my great grandmother sometimes, who I only knew through a photo with a babushka and no teeth. How was it for her, to watch her daughters and sons one day leave one day...and cross the world to who knows what and where? Never returning.

We can say these mothers had broods of a dozen and more. Does it make a difference? I don't know. As I write this I think of my mother and her defiance to not live the life of her mother or grandmother. She succeeded, I think. But lost in another way, the way we have been recording and understanding, here.

M's Mother is here from Mexico. Right here in the house. We spent the afternoon trying on my Mother's clothes and we have a big box full of clothes and shoes to go back with her, all the best labels, with tags on. My Mother would have loved it. While they are the same size, M's mother is the picture of tradition. But you should have seen her delight trying on the pretty clothes she called juvenil. She doesn't quite grasp why my Mom had clothes that looked as if for a woman 40 years younger and I couldn't really explain it either.

The last time M's Mother came I think was in 2011. So it is really a big deal.

 

[BusynMember]

This is the nugget of it, is it not? That is the way my sister justifies all of the evil she does. She feels hurt. She feels wronged.

I am reading this entire post with interest. I have the same curiosity. And my sister also feels wronged. Are they triplets?

 

[Copabanana]

It is so good to be nakedly vulnerable, to have that one person we allow to see us and find they champion the strength in us.

Yay.

I love that you have M.

Me too. Cedar, this is such a beautiful definition of trust, that your wrote above. To bear your soul, ugliness and weakness and vanity and pettiness and all manner of yucky undesirable qualities, i.e. not your made up self, whether it be of makeup or persona, or whatever else we do when we are on....or dress up or...are at work.

And this person...at least when they are in a good mood and not mad at you...chooses to attend to the strongest not the weakest parts.

I remember once when we were mad at each other (one of the many, many times) and I had descended to the lowest of low point of defensiveness and debasement. I said something like....to you I am just garbage...or some other stupid thing that I must of heard my mother say a million times and it became incorporated into my psychic DNA. Actually, I think my grandmother said it too.

And M was so hurt, it stopped him in his tracks. Because he said, actually, I am so proud to be with you, to have you at my side and proud of your qualities and your accomplishments.

He was so offended that I would believe he would degrade me or ever want to.

So, when I am mad I try at least not to use that one line, so as to not hurt him really bad....

A place of utter vulnerability. But maybe, we don't need to go there. Because that already happened, to us.

This quote was from what you saw in the faces of the homeless people.

I worked with a woman. A really, really nice lady and a wonderful doctor. And I wish I remembered exactly the context of her saying this but will try to piece it together. We must have been talking about broken people and I must have referenced myself in some way, as not having experienced whatever it was in that same way. Her reply?

You didn't have to. You learned that long ago, when you were broken as a child. You didn't have to learn it again. You already had.

Such a nice lady. She was the one who told me that narcissistic people often in late middle age become sociopathic because of their rage that life has not delivered to them what they knew they deserved. So they set about getting it one way or another. I had never known that. And it makes so much sense.

Maybe that is what happened to Nixon with Watergate.

in the Jewish mystic belief system, it is said that evil entered the picture when, in the Word that was spoken to create all that is, a small intonation was pronounced incorrectly, or was changed, immediately after it was Spoken.

Maybe that is what we are all doing, here.

That is beautiful Cedar.

that time when I was broken and broken and rebroken again so I could choose to face it, and to come together correctly.

And this is beautiful too.

So, I had to keep going back to bed, to break again, and again, in order to come together correctly. Looked at that way, it takes great courage and faith. I mean, the willingness to get it right. But then if the resources did not exist for me to go back to bed and not work for 2 and a half years, I would have had to accept incompletely reconstructed, I guess. For the sake of a pay check.

But we cannot help our sisters to do that thing we are doing. We can believe they can do it, too.

Sometimes, I think Cedar that you have way more heart for your sister than I do for mine. Actually of the three of us, SWOT, you and I, I think SWOT is the most caring sister. SWOT suffers for her sister's pain.

I don't for mine. Sometimes I wish for ill to befall her. Sad, but true. And if she reads this, So there.

M proposed to his mother that we all sleep together. (Like we did with my Mom before she got really, really sick. (I mean she was already really, really sick but had not yet been diagnosed.) By necessity. She had only the one king size bed.

It sounds fun but it was horrible. I got stuck in the middle until I said NO MORE and M had to go in the middle and my Mom loved the whole thing.

And when M proposed that we all sleep together to his Mom (he wants her to feel safe and secure) she said:

Ewwww....In Spanish. (And screwed up her face and said No Way, in Spanish.

So, she is asleep in my mother's King Size bed. All 90 lbs of her. About the same size as my mom before she lost even more weight.

And gratefully I get to sleep just with M.

I don't know what tomorrow holds, but will try to check in.

COPA *still strong and whole.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

My sister abandoned my mother (and me) for her last 10 months of her life, not returning phone calls, refusing to give even moral support, to say goodbye or anything at all.

Do you know why your sister did this, Copa?

For my own sister, what I have been able to pull together is...you know the feeling of a religious fanatic? My sister is someone who takes her identity in that way. She is one of those people who uses her "saved" to look down on those who are not. So you see the need to do that; that is okay. We all are doing the best we can, here in the human of it. There is something rigid; a place she is hurt. I am trying to find and clear my own places like that ~ to see through my own eyes and not be afraid, anymore.

There is just something weird; something off that I am having a look at now. It seems she is working against me and winning. But what is it she wants? What is it she wins? To answer your question about why I believe there is a strong possibility she will refuse to care for my mother after a certain point ~ there is something here having to do with the exclusion, and with the golden grand, and with the way my mother has changed and been made vulnerable to this sister over the issue of family; of unspoken accusation, maybe. All these disparate flashes of something that looks right and turns out not to be right at all indicate an insincerity. I wonder when my sister will turn my mother out and turn away from her and I think she will and I think it will happen once no one else with whom my sister is in competition for our mother wants my mother.

This is why she so rabidly hates the man who wanted to marry my mother, and who still wants to. That is why she is so deeply in denial about what is happening to all of us that she can call me, after all that has happened between us, after she hurt my child, and talk about the horrible thing it is that my mother is in any way connected to this man.

If the man who wants to marry my mother were out of the picture, if I were out of the picture and if even my brother were out, then my mother would be vulnerable in a way she has never been because she is old, now. And I believe with my whole heart that she would turn away from my mother because ~ it has something to do with my sister having become family at long last. But that has something to do with having superceded. It has something to do with having and tossing away as worthless, the win being in having made the cast away person worthless; the win being that religious fanatic feeling of "I walk with the Lord."

That kind of sanctimonious justification of a thing you intended to do, a thing it gave you secret and intense pleasure to think about when you would do it, all along.

It ties in so neatly with dancing in the kitchen.

Who is predator. Who is prey.

Long knives.

***

And that was okay, because no one really knew how to do this. My mother continues to return to my sister's in the winter months. But the man continues to be connected to her, very very much against my sister's will. In here somewhere is that my sister has been deeply involved each time things have gone so impossibly bad with my relationship to my mother, and with the way my mother sees my D H. But I am hurt, too. We all are, and if you are going to be family, then you work through the hurt places and you believe you can do this and then, maybe you can.

But my sister intentionally hurt my daughter.

And then, she FB me privately to be sure I knew that she had.

So the question becomes whether I continue to work at family as best I can, watching everything get so out of balance that it is like being in one of those movies where the night circus comes to town and the music wails instead of playing so prettily and you go there anyway, pretending it is day and all is well when there is blood everywhere.

And on your sister's lips, too.

There is a fullness of satisfaction in her that is a weird wrongness. That "I walk with the Lord" feeling.

When my daughter was so hurt, Copa, my sister began stalking her on Facebook. Neither she nor my mother expressed regret to me, offered support for me ~ there was nothing, from them, not even from my own mother, Copa. (The beating happened after I had made my sister so angry over the exclusion piece ~ the event noted above.) So, from my daughter, my sister learned all the things our daughter was telling anyone at all because she was so damaged and vulnerable and confused and then this sister dropped my child; and it made my child cry, what my sister did. My daughter had been convinced she had an ally, a place of strength and compassion in my sister and she hurt my daughter by pretending to love her and then, dropping her.

Oh man, I just see everything through pissy green where my sister is concerned, now.

Everything now is justified through her religion. When I first brought up that she was purposely isolating or colluding in the isolation of our mother and excluding our brother, her response was: "I walk with the Lord. He may heal our relationship but I am done." She says words that present an image of one kind of person Copa ~ and she is so funny and clever and bright and attractive ~ that you could find yourself like me, just coming to understand that the light at the heart of her shines only on her.

Or something to that effect. We were texting on Facebook, so I still have the actual texts.

Yet, she does these strange things, these things that are weirdly wrong, that leave everyone feeling used, somehow. Here is a descriptive story that will help me place her more firmly as well as color her in for you. So, we were all at my parents' while my father was still alive. And there is forever that hyper-alert feeling in me when I am with them, but it is still fun to be with them. Except that the weirdness has this flavor: My brother and his wife were eating their dinner away from everyone else.

I went and sat with them for that reason.

And my sister, when first one person, and then the next, wondered where I was, because they do not see me so often, blew up about how she was the one who was visiting from far away, not me.

Things like that.

And I think the turning away from my mother will happen this summer, if the man who wanted to marry my mother comes anywhere near her. And I think that because I think my sister wants my mother bare naked vulnerable so she can dance in the light of it.

***

My daughter is not me. She humiliated my sister publicly over things that were true about my sister. Things that are worse than anything my daughter has done, but that only family would know.

So my daughter is fine. She has been places so few people have. She reads character like an open book. Seeing as she does, she is generally compassionate to an extreme. But she does not like the using my sister does, or the flavor of the win.

So, she put that situation exactly back into balance without blinking an eye.

So that's good, then.

That is the flavor of my sister.

This thing happening in what is left of our family. And the feeling that the weirdness is not an accidental thing, a thing come of woundings, at all.

I have an appointment today, Copa.

I will write more later.

This has been an excellent thread for me.

Thank you.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

First, the most important thing. My Mother would never wear a scarf (I would.) My mother was only 5'. While she loved scarves she looked slightly ridiculous with a scarf, especially a long one. So, maybe that is why she chose the scarf, no longer encumbered by the constraints of space and time, or fashion. OK. I see it, now. And maybe she got taller.

It is brilliantly red, Copa. Your mother is seated. The room is beautifully appointed. It is daytime. Big windows.

Strong.

Very strong.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I mean, a few posts back she was trying to love your mother into shape...and now she is going to dump her

Those were words I had given my sister, Copa.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

The Mother ridiculed me and berated me on and on about how every single one of those cookies had been destined for a specific person or purpose and I had no right to touch them at all, especially without asking. But of course, I had not had the confidence to ask, because I was just a poor neighbor child with nowhere else to go.

My mother does things like this.

I cannot find the line now, but I agree wholeheartedly that SWOT feels pain for her sister, and for her sister's betrayal, more deeply than either you or I. SWOT your heart is so innocent, still.

I am hurt or surprised, and I accept it. Copa, you are wondering how it all came about, I think. Without someone to explore it with you (also true for me) you and I can only think in those same familiar patterns and find the same solution: We must try.

SWOT is deeply hurt by the ongoing betrayal of this sister she loves without reservation.

I see that too, Copa.

There is an innocence in you, SWOT. A willingness to take the hurt and forgive it as though it never happened. You are trying so hard to be fair.

It seems to me that your sister knows this about you, about your generous and gentle and so innocent in a way heart, and is using that very thing to hurt you again and again.

Cedar