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

[Scent of Cedar *]

You sought such unity in yourself, and for your family, aided by your beloved and oh so heroic children, together seeking out instead of fleeing from the hidden false, secreted pieces and exposing them.

I would still be right there, happily bragging about every little thing but willingly including the others if I could have, Copa. You would not believe my arrogance in all things until in a snap of the fingers it seems, I had nothing at all. I was talking with the War of the Balkavas grand this morning. She is present, and ever more present, to the most amazing things. It is an exhilaration to see through her eyes. And this is the funny thing she said, this morning. (This was the grand, I think I posted about this who, in describing her sudden arrival into the middle of the wilderness with a bona fide hippie type who makes his living creating and selling hand crafted teas blended to evince an emotion or an experience, said: "Grandma. I can't tell if I'm bored or relaxed." :O)

Anyway, this morning's comment: "Everyone seems to think I'm this mysterious person, Grandma. What they don't know is that I'm really just this dorky person having a life."

It was just so cute.

Here is another from this morning: People ask, "What is your destination, in this wandering all over journey you are doing? And I tell them there isn't one, but that I have a sh** load of faith in the journey."

She is only 22.

Now, how could she know all that, already?

The landscape design is completed, and she is returning today, to the wilderness and the tea crafting hippie. In the interim, she has hiked to a private place where it was said that though you cannot see it from outside this sheltered little glen there, once you are in it, everything glows pink.

And that was true.

She believes it was a combination of sunlight filtering through the pine needles above and then reflecting against the carpet of rust colored pine needles beneath.

Smart girl.

She said it was so pink, once you were there, that everything was changed, within that circle.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Healing trauma:

http://www.helpguide.org/articles/ptsd-trauma/emotional-and-psychological-trauma.htm

 

[BusynMember]

Thanks, Cedar

I've actually already read that, but it was good to read it again.

You know, this new psychologist is not the first one who brought up that I had symptoms of trauma (they did not call it PTSD). But all along I have been told that my childhold was traumatic. So I knew it. But I didn't know how to handle it.

I had a boyfriend after my first divorce. I think people come into our lives for reasons and this one must have come into it to teach me about detaching because the relationship was not going to go anywhere. This was right after my grandmother died and left $5000 to my biological son and didn't leave anything to my other two children. My mother was going ballistic because I wouldn't do it. This was the beginning of her worst abuse and final cut. I was telling this man about her and this incident and how it was upsetting me, but how I refused to do the old "I love you best" thang that went on in my family of origin. He told me that he wouldn't talk to her anymore for being so cruel.

It was a brand new idea to me. I was shocked. "But...she's my MOTHER."
He said it didn't matter. That he would do it to his mother if she was cruel to him. That he didn't need mean people in his life, no matter who they were. That he didn't talk to his sister.
Well, that made me think. Even though it was done to me by my mother and sister, it did not occur to me that *I* could cut out anyone from my own family. You just didint' do that. And if they (my family) did it, it was only because I was either so very horrible and nonredeemable or because they were. I still had my mother's tapes in my head about how I was worthless.

We live and learn.

For me, the only solution to not having little people renting space in my head is to blot out all reminders that they exist. Then, even if I talk about them, it is almost like talking about strangers. I can't cheat either. No social media peeping or going to that other forum. Then I stop caring.

But, boy, it took a long time to learn.

Cedar, why do you still engage with your mother and sister? Obligation? Guilt?

C1--doing well!
C2-=nothing
C3--Difficult Child at one time
C4--nothing
C5-nothing
C6-Difficult Child on his own

Read more: http://www.conductdisorders.com/community/threads/what-is-a-lie.60424/page-2#ixzz3cHsutOcB

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Regarding how to interpret relationship, and time, and the right and responsibility to be wise and wary, and to define our situations with our families of origin to ourselves, and whether to welcome them back or to protect ourselves from them, Echolette wrote this on Seeking Strenth's thread in Parent Emeritus.

I do not know how to quote directly from one thread to another. This is a quote from Echolette's post.


"Whatever is happening is okay. You will know how to handle yourselves. Relationships are long...there is no such thing as ruining them or missing an opportunity in a single moment. If he has changed and is reaching out, there will be more. If he is being manipulative, you have created space and strength and will recognize it and protect yourself."

Echolette

This morning, I have been feeling a sense of burden, feeling like a warrior posted to keep watch over a battleground where the battle was lost and everyone died and the Earth itself is torn up and bloodied.

Though I pretended to be angry and to feel vindictive and to name names and say true things, in a very real way, I hoped I would find a different truth as I pushed through my own psyche and my rememberings.

But I didn't. I found twisted, pointless, really ugly betrayals everywhere I looked and kept looking and it was a really hard thing, to do that for no blasting trumpets or banners waving in a rising wind at the end of it.

It feels like such a heavy burden. I am carrying it, but it really is so heavy. It is mine, so I am carrying it, but it is so different a thing than I had believed I would find, at the end of it.

So on that thread, we talked about warriors, too.

That helped me define the look of it, the heft of what this feels like.

We touched too on Leonard Cohen's "Halleluiah". On that line in which he says that all he'd ever known of love was how to shoot someone who'd outdrawn you. So, that would be the lust of vengeance, right? That "How dare you?" feeling, when the thing has already been done and done and done, to you.

So, even for our families of origin, there is much to be learned from Leonard Cohen's Halleluiah.

What else did I learn on that thread, this morning....

I don't remember. But it was precisely the right thing to have done, to have savored and tasted the bitter and the sweet in. So, I think each of us reading here would find value in that thread.

Cedar

And also in the Rocky clips that I had posted somewhere I cannot find them, now. "Getting Stronger", especially. "Eye of the Tiger", especially.

That is us.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

It was a brand new idea to me. I was shocked. "But...she's my MOTHER."
He said it didn't matter. That he would do it to his mother if she was cruel to him. That he didn't need mean people in his life, no matter who they were. That he didn't talk to his sister.

I feel that way too, SWOT. So surprised that they could be wrong. Surprised again, in knowing they meant it. It wasn't a mistake, it wasn't that they had a momentary thing and had been overwhelmed with emotion.

It wasn't that they'd been hurt by me somehow, and were trying to re-establish balance for themselves.

They actually meant to hurt me.

I am so surprised.

I am so surprised at my own hurt that I disregarded. I am surprised by the wash of bright, burning anger. Where have I been keeping all that? How could I have continued believing in them?

How could I have done that?!?

And how, in all the hells that ever were, is it possible that there was no mercy, for me? I was thinking this morning about when everything got so bad, so truly hurtful between my mom and my sister and myself. It was when our daughter was so troubled, SWOT and Copa. That is when they gunned the motors; that is when they joined forces. That is when my sister did every single thing it would be in the power of an aunt to do to pretend to my so hurt daughter that family understood and forgave and stood by. So she could hurt her, SWOT and Copa.

So they could destroy my child to the best of their capacities to do so.

That hurts me so much, to know they did that.

I am so surprised.

Copa had noted at one point that the nature of my descriptions of my sister seemed to have turned nastier, that she carried a demanding, self righteous flavor in the ways I described her. And she did, you guys. She did those things to me, and to us, to all of us. And the ground she stood up from was our terrible brokenness.

And I just keep tripping over that, this morning.

That they knew what they were doing. That they hunted me down, hunted my child down, to do it, with purpose and determined intent.

That is hatred. Rabid, neverending hatred right to the core of the thing.

And I am so surprised.

I do. I feel like a little kid, all deserted.

Or, like that warrior we were talking about on Seeking's thread. The battle was bloody, and the Earth itself is all torn up and saturated, like step in the mud and blood comes up saturated.

And I feel so sad, about that.

And I am deploying my detachment skills that I learned for my kids, and I am starting yoga again, for the body memory of it.

And I have that fierce karate instructor now, and that fits in here somewhere.

But it is a very quiet time in my heart, today.

If they came here today? I would not even be able to muster the French soldier from Lil and Jabber's pirate thread. And not the kilt man, either.

I am just so sad, this morning.

And I know it will pass, and I know these feelings were beneath all the things I knew and denied and so it is healing to have them.

And that is all I know about this healing process we are engaged in, this morning.

But there is a good thing here, too. I am seeing through my own eyes now, and I am seeing, not them, but myself differently.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

And if they (my family) did it, it was only because I was either so very horrible and nonredeemable or because they were. I still had my mother's tapes in my head about how I was worthless.

We live and learn.

Yes.

It is a hard thing to see it, though.

For me, the only solution to not having little people renting space in my head is to blot out all reminders that they exist. Then, even if I talk about them, it is almost like talking about strangers. I can't cheat either. No social media peeping or going to that other forum. Then I stop caring.

Well, I don't know. I am not talking to them because even I could see, after like, the first two years or so, that they (my mom and my sister, both) were being jerky. I saw it over the issue of exclusion, when my sister would not keep contact with my brother. And I brought it up to both of them, and my sister got so mad and my mother gave whatever that huge tool was, that had been my father's, to a stranger when my brother stood up to her about the way she was treating his grands and requiring that everyone accept that and fawn on the golden grand. And the condition, to the stranger, was that he cold have the whatever it was free, but it had to be gone out of the garage, that very day. And then, when my brother came to help my mother with her lawn, or to check or repair her car or remodel her home ~ and he does all those things ~ and whatever he was there for that day, she sent him into the garage to be sure he would know what she did to him.

Because the thing, whatever it was ~ something big having to do with re-rimming tires or something ~ was gone, like you blink your eyes and this impossibly big thing is just disappeared.

And that was a thing of his father's, and he should have had that thing once she was finally dead and assuming my sister had not figured out some way to lay claim to, and move it.

My mother told me this story, SWOT and Copa.

So, killing two birds with one stone, maybe? A warning of some kind that she could do that, could reach in and destroy something irreplaceable, something having to do with family, and with dead fathers, and with memory and legitimacy and the courage to not ever dare to stand up to her in any way.

And I just can hardly believe it.

I can hardly believe these things happened to me.

Because what she did to my brother hurt me in my heart, to. It was a little like that time when I was little, and I saw what I saw, and after that? He was not real in the same way to me, ever again.

There is a technical term for that, but I can't think what it is, right now. Something to do with dissociative states.

We live and learn.

For me, the only solution to not having little people renting space in my head is to blot out all reminders that they exist.

That makes sense. In that way of always thinking about that family dinner I am always posting about. That was the representation of the hope that we would do this, that we would be the family I am so determined to have. Perhaps that is the imagery I need to work with, then. Determined exclusion of them from that imagery of completion and wholeness.

It is an honor to be invited to my table, not a given.

They have atrocious table manners anyway. Eating ice cream out of the carton all together, like they are Hawaaians crouched around a fire scooping poi out of a hollowed out coconut shell with spit all over their fingers and they don't even care.

Sharp teeth.

Needle sharp, those dirty, dirty rats.

Roar.

Strong like the bull.

No more running-away, super clever Conduct Disorders motorcycle, for me.

Eye of the Tiger.

Not "lust of vengeance" but "revenge is a dish best eaten cold".

Okay. So I get it that this imagery is a defense mechanism. But it's pretty good imagery, and very different imagery indeed than my usual defense mechanism imagery.

:O)

I can't cheat either.

Then I stop caring.

I hope that happens for me, too. I am in the "I can't believe it" phase, maybe.

But I am staying present to it, working out how to be with it, how to be with what is. The "revenge is a dish best eaten cold" part bothers me. It seems so wrong when our deepest hope is that this can be successfully resolved.

That cannot be my hope, anymore.

And like you SWOT, I cannot cheat, either.

***

So, Copa, where and how are you, this morning?

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Cedar, why do you still engage with your mother and sister? Obligation? Guilt?

I cannot not engage with them, yet. It feels like this all has to have been a mistake, a wrongness in the air or something. And I did make the decision to disengage, but I was like, trying it on for size or something. And to wish them well and to leave them to themselves, and to be sad for myself that this was so and to believe, with all my heart, that we would all come together somehow in the end. But like your sister does to you too, SWOT, my sister called me anyway. And I was clearer enough to not understand how she could possibly be calling me if what it looked like she felt was how she felt.

I was not seeing through my own eyes, SWOT.

I was seeing myself through the eyes of my abusers.

Startling clarity of vision, like in that poem I posted somewhere while we were beginning this process.

Or, like the sound of one hand, clapping.

Or like that beggars cup which holds the reflections that tell us who we are.

I never imagined it would turn out to be what it is.

I am so surprised.

Cedar

And my sister calling like she did, and threatening to appear at my door like she did ~ those things were abuse, too. And she knew it, but like always, I never even had a clue.

I thought she loved me.

I really did.

Huh.

 

[BusynMember]

I am so sorry you are feeling sad this morning. I will share something I read somewhere (as I have started reading so much on this topic and, at the same time, I am embarassed that I am this old and it is still in the rental space in my head).

I read that in the autumn of our lives that is when we tend to sit back and wonder what our lives meant. I guess that's why so many of us oldsters are examining all we have seen and heard. And the truth of what was and what wasn't. For surely we did not live the truth or we buried it earlier because we were busy with our young children and work and other issues. This is our time to reflect, to learn, and to truly enjoy our golden years and I plan on it. You should too.


Thankfully for me, and sadly for you that it didn't happen, my FOO disliked me so much that my dear children never knew any of them. There was no aunt they would have given two seconds to listen to and that is a blessing. There is no uncle who could have used them, except for the older one who is now dead and only used them for a while. He took them each weekend or so in between his two wives as he could not stand being alone, then he disregarded them completely after he married again. If I had know he was forming a false bond with my young boys that he did not plan to keep up...no, he never even sent them birthday cards after that. What does that say about him?

This is the uncle who used to try to scare me when I was very young. The one I can picture in my room way, way back when my parents lived in Chicago. Must have been before I was five years old as we had a house by then.

What a prize. Yet he was seen as "so nice" by the other FOOs and his students loved him. He was a college professore. I find myself wondering if he truly liked his students or just wanted to BE well liked and liked attention, especially from good looking female students. He was a handsome man for as long as I knew him and he was also, I'm sure, scoring pretty high on the narcissistic scale. He was a mama's boy to the extreme.

So was my brother, but my brother did move away and my uncle tried to be near his mother for most of his life.

He was idealized by all in my FOO (the few of us who existed a nd, of course, I never thought he was that great or even that handsome).

Always the outcast in my thinking

Why bring him up? It was part of my pondering as I wrote. How could such a vain man be so idealized in anyone's FOO? He could do anything he wanted and he was terrific. Here is a good example of a Golden Boy/Scapegoat, Cedar. It is very telling. I wonder how FOO explained this discrepancy to themselves.

It was understood that everyone in my family marry a Jewish person. You were told you had to do it.

My uncle, however, dated a Chinese woman for years. I don't know if he ever dated ANY Jewish women. But I remember my grandmother always LOVED his girlfriends because..."They are so good to Uncle Vain and to me."

Now my mother's go-to topic when waking me up at 2am in the morning was that she suspected a boy I went out with maybe one time (as I never had a long term boyfriend as a teen) was not Jewish. Even when they were, and for the first two years of my dating career they mostly were, she was certain I lied and they were a "shiska" (Jewish word for gentile). Very little upset my mom about my life. My grades didn't matter. My messiness, inability to organize, emotional problems, and teasing my sister did not matter. My long hair mattered and dating Jewish boys mattered.

But Uncle Vain could date who he wanted and even my mother beamed. Maybe it was because he promised they would convert to Judaism. But the truth is, Uncle Vain was tied to his mother's umbilical cord his entire life emotionally, but he did exactly what he wanted to do, just like I did. The only difference is that anything he did, even if it was the same thing I did, was embraced. And everything I did, even if it was what he did, was denounced.

These nuggets of truth about Fun and Fraud in my Family came to me slowly as I hit my 40's and up. The last person I wanted to believe in has blown it. And now I can see it clearly down the path without obstruction in the way. And I'm grateful. Grateful that they were never Grandma, Great-Uncle, Uncle or Aunt to my kids, most of all. So grateful I could cry. That's why my family works (my REAL family, not FOO). These people, who see with cloudy eyes, are not in their lives.

Cedar, I will never know why things happened like they did. Neither will you. We never know everything. But I do think maybe it's a shame that your sister was around to mess with your children. And your mother too to whisper bad advice in your ear, to make you feel bad and who knows what they said to your kids??? I get it that sister was hateful when your daughter was so sick. The people who you believed you could trust the most let you down. It is quite a shock when you first realize it. That's why we shout to ourselves "NONONO!" And it takes so long to face it.

I am slowly getting over the last shock (Thing 2) and am again picking myself up and healing and holding my head up to realize it is as it has always been. I made a mistake keeping Thing2 in my life after she did a three year cut off for something she was angry about ten years before.

But it's never too late to have a good life and, Cedar, you have one. You just need to accept that the things you are learning that shock you have always been there. You just didn't see it yet. Nothing has changed. Nothing except YOU.

Can you maybe do something really nice for yourself today? Remember, this is not new behavior. It is just new to us...our realization of it. That's how I look at it. And I feel pretty darn silly that it took me this long to get it all figured out. But with good therapy (you shouldn't give up on a good WOMAN therapist) and self-awareness, it is clear to me now. My own way of being affected by my FOO, especially mother, may not have taken the same turn as my siblings has/had, but it was abusive. And that set the stage for the tiny family to jump in and carefully listen to her and to then get overly picky about me. Not saying I never did anything wrong and wasn't disturbed. They knew I was. Wouldn't that make a loving family more understanding? I think so.

It just means that they never loved me the way normal families love one another.

I keep reminding myself that I am the only one lelft standing who can have intimacy without fear. It took hard work to do it, but it was worth it.

When I thtink, those Mother tapes in my head, "My sister hates me and my brother also things I'm bad, so it must be true or they'd be talking to me because they are so nice"...I just remember that Sister is still talking andl probably bedding a man who has abused her so badly that he had her in chronic pain over him, addicted to h im, last time we spoke. And s he doesn't stop talking to him. So it isn't that I abused her. Heaven knows, she has told me many times "He's not a nice man" and "He does abuse me." But she is still with him. Sick, sick, sick, sick, sick.

Yes, HER.

She isn't not talking to me because I'm abusive.

Dating a married man with a kid is abusive, Sis. And morally despicable. Yes, it is. That is you. Do what you do for your own sake only. I see you, Sis. A cheater is a liar, Sis. Tell your forum what YOU do, Sis.

All of them think everyone is borderline. Surely, they'd label you borderline too.

And remember you also think your boyfriend is borderline.

I think he's an alcoholic who has a sucker for a girlfriend, but that's you. You are not strong and you don't know how to get away from him or me. That's why you read this.

I tried to HELP you with him for four years, but I'm abusive.

Begone.

Cedar, that is who these people are. We don't need that.

She doesn't care if people abuse her. She only cares if she thinks *I* did.

It's so obvious that it makes me laugh these days.

Cedar, remember, they have their own stories in their heads and you have your truth. Nobody holds your truth except you. Nobody knows your motives, your pain, your happiness...nobody knows you except you.

You are enough. I am enough.

F them

 

[BusynMember]

I was not seeing through my own eyes, SWOT.

I was seeing myself through the eyes of my abusers.

Startling clarity of vision, like in that poem I posted somewhere while we were beginning this process.

We all do, Cedar. I am sickly addicted to books about abused children. I asked my therapist about it. A few actually since I've liked true crime and books about abused kids for some time. I like to see the bad guys lose and the kids win and be strong as adults. I like to see how they get there.

My therapists said that I am trying to find my own story in those pages, but I don't get that, really. These kids had it worse than me. They were abused physically and sexually too sometimes. I have no idea why I can i identify with that. I know I wasn't physically or sexually abused. But the stories make me cry until their triumph at the end. Obviously they would not have written a memoir if they had not survived and done well and were now happy. Like us. Well, I know I'm usually happy...I h ope you are too!!!

Cedar, all these kids I read about believe they are as bad as their abusers say they are UNTIL THEY GET AWAY FROM THEM.

That's the part about the books I like. I skim over the abusing parts. I read the endings.


David Pelzer did not love his mother.

Good for David.

His siblings told him "it never happened." "It wasn't that bad."

Right.

For THEM.

Cedar, it is a bitter shock we all face. Cedar, a therapist would empower you. I'm sure you also show symptoms of trauma and having been abused. They will see that and call you o ut on that. If you get a bad one, fire him and move on. There are really good ones today. Things are different in psychiatry. I promise.

I'm going to finish reading your postj

 

[BusynMember]

A warning of some kind that she could do that, could reach in and destroy something irreplaceable, something having to do with family, and with dead fathers, and with memory and legitimacy and the courage to not ever dare to stand up to her in any way.

This is despicable.
No words.

 

[BusynMember]

There is a technical term for that, but I can't think what it is, right now. Something to do with dissociative states.

I can't think of the term, unless it is depersonalization. It is a trauma symptom and very, very frightening. Do you mean that every time you saw him, it was like you were suddenly watching him through glass or that he was like an animated figure for a movie? That would be depersonalization. I still get it in certain situations sometimes, especially when I have to talk to new people in offices.

It's like the other person isn't real.

 

[InsaneCdn]

My therapists said that I am trying to find my own story in those pages, but I don't get that, really. These kids had it worse than me.

SWOT - you can't say that. There is no way to compare. There is no way to say that emotional and mental abuse is on a different level than physical abuse. Any kind of abuse has a range, from mild to severe. The fact that there are worse severities of the abuse someone suffered doesn't minimize the abuse or it's impact.

Some of the factors that determine how "bad" it was:
- how long it went on
- how frequent
- incident severity (for example, the strap is not the same as being beaten to within an inch of your life)
- whether the child had any capacity for escape (could they, some of the time, hide, or stay at a friend's house or in other ways not be around?)
- whether anyone was on the child's side

 

[BusynMember]

IC, you're absolutely right. The duration, whether anyone stuck up for you, whether you had validation that it happened, all of that plays a big role. Most kids abused at home are also abused in school too which is also traumatizing. There is no safe haven, so to speak. Another issue is your inborn resiliency and whether or not you have that.

 

[Copabanana]

Sad, Cedar, today. Watched Joe Biden's son Beau's funeral. Sad for them and for myself. I didn't have the expectation of love, loyalty or good treatment, ever.

Never the expectation let alone hope that one among them would do the right thing for me.

Nor care for pain inflicted by their hand, expecting that my love for them would tolerate all, that I would eat my grief and anger, as my due.

Such a different vision of family as I watched today.

I have had not heard from my son, and miss him. I realized that what I want most from him is that he stand up to do the right thing, say the right thing, acknowledge what is the right thing.

In this interval of waiting, that is what leaks out. Wanting somebody in my family to do the right thing. By me.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

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.

I thought about this aspect of things, Copa. My sister feels entitled too, now that I think about it. She was all about Rolex watches. She may have one, now. But she would look down her nose at those who did not have them when she didn't. Things like that. I don't know what the other entitlements may be or have been. The exclusion of the other sibs. That could be an entitlement mindset. Nothing else would explain it. She is so causally cruel about my mother's nastiness regarding my brother's grands, or the treatment of the girl born with spina bifida. The way my sister feels about the man who wanted to marry my mother...the rage behind it, the sense of betray she feels now surrounding the whole issue of this man still in my mother's life. That could be a sense of entitlement. I will read the points you made regarding diagnosis. I skipped through them the first time I read your post. I am uncomfortable with that kind of labeling, but this may be information that will clarify things further for me. Thank you Copa, for taking the trouble to post them here, for me.

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?

Because she behaved as though she were jealous, or as though she were ~ okay, so here's the truth. Because I am forever taking responsibility for things, for smoothing things over and not being stuck in destructive feelings; I am quick to say I am sorry and I mean it. I believe there is such pain in the world and I truly do not get why people would cause pain intentionally so I always think there must be a misunderstanding. I do not intend to hurt or belittle or be arrogant or show off or do other hurtful things. I do of course, sometimes. (This is my mother: "Don't think, Cedar.") I want to make it better wherever I have been, and for sure, I don't want to have made it worse through carelessness or willfulness or stupidity.

But those things do happen.

So, I try to be better, to not hurt them, or me, or anyone. I return again and again to SWOT's post about fluidity, about that flexibility/rigidity continuum in healthy families. I get it that I can be so unaware. But it isn't a willful thing on my part.

So, that is how I take the blame, or the responsibility, which is a term I think more closely applies, for how my sister feels when she is, as it turns out, manipulating me. And I see that there is an effort to take control there, on my part. But addressing the elephant (once you see it, and then, once you can finally see it correctly) is a good thing to do. Otherwise, everyone just stays stuck where they are and things escalate from there, though the thing was wrong from its inception.

We are a family who turns away, Copa.

I don't want to do that, I don't want that to happen...but somehow, it does. It happens, to me. I am the odd man out, but I never can figure out why. Until this last time, when I spoke out about the things that were happening that I did not think were right. Once I see it, I cannot not say it. Most of the time, I don't see things the way they really might be.

Rotten.

In my individual case which, as we share our thoughts here, seems also to be a pattern for those brought up in abusive environments, the thing I needed to understand was that not everyone thinks like me. ("Just don't think, Cedar.") They hate me. My own sister and my own mother, Copa. They really do detest me. I am still stumbling over that. But it is a familiar stumbling place, now. It is coming into "My own sister, my own mother, hate and detest and harbor terrible feelings toward me and my people and my children; and that's just what is."

So, that's like, one or two steps from: It is what it is. No big deal.

But I had a really hard time seeing that, and I still feel badly for myself that this is so.

I do.

Bereft.

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.

I have been jealous of my sister a million times. I can remember getting one of those horses (I always loved horses) kids ride on for Christmas one year? And my sister climbed on it without any bottoms on and I was so mad!!!

Ha!

But even this minute Copa, I see her being hurt. I feel that same, sick weakness roll through me. I feel helpless and I see her crying and I feel so sorry that happened to her. And it's like, you might wish a thousand bad things would happen to someone over any little thing? But when really bad things happen and nothing can stop it and you are caught in that place ~ huh. So maybe, that protectiveness I feel began in a child's jealousy, in that powerful kind of hating or loving or being knocked aside or embarrassed that I am displaced, not enough? That could be it, Copa.

That somewhere in the magical child of me, I thought I was responsible for what happened. Believed I had caused it with my thinking. (Just don't think, Cedar.) That could be, Copa. It's beginning to circle, and that is how it feels to connect to and undo a trauma.

Well, huh.

I had never looked at it that way. I still remember how mad I was that she got on my brand new horse without any pants on.

And it does connect, immediately, to that same imagery I described above.

And to my mother: "Just don't think, Cedar."

And to my fear of that lust of vengeance feeling; and to the first therapist and whatever I might have done that he felt threatened enough or repulsed enough or whatever it was he felt, to have said I was a manipulator, and that he would never accept the compliments of someone like that. Oh, how I wish he'd never done that.

Well he did, and that's that.

***

So at some level then, I am thinking I made or caused or encouraged or wished for my mother to do what she did. That doesn't feel quite right, because she did it to me, too. But it could be that I believed I deserved what she did, because I was thinking like that. Or that I found validation for the hatred and contempt in my mother because, whether she knew it or not, I had been thinking those bad things. If she had known I was thinking like that, this could be a justification for the abusive out of controlness; that could be why a mother would strangle a child, even. Or, a child might make sense of things in exactly that way.

In exactly that way, Copa.

To make sense of why.

So, that could be a huge piece of how my psyche works.

And it would dovetail nicely with my feeling responsible for everything that happens. And somehow, that dovetails with the way little girls are made to feel responsible when they are sexualized by adults.

Oh, brother.

I don't even want to go there. But I suppose I will.

So now I have to think about this for a little while.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

I have had not heard from my son, and miss him. I realized that what I want most from him is that he stand up to do the right thing, say the right thing, acknowledge what is the right thing.

Copa, hi.

I missed you too.

I know how you feel. "Right thing" is subjective yet there are societal norms. However, many young people see wrongs with those societal norms and they feel they are right even when it hurts them. I'm not sure I'm making sense.

I'm sorry you have not heard from your son.

Cedar, I was jealous of my sister, not because she would take up time. She got far less time than a newborn deserves, if I recall correctly. And I got no attention either really unless I was doing something wrong or throwing a tantrum...it was attention, but negative attention.

I was jealous of my sister when I was a girl because s he seemed to be the only family member who was normal and had friends. I did not realize she was suffering too. I did not notice that between my brother's illness and my emotional problems she got NO attention at home. She noticed it, of course, since it was herself going through it.
I do feel bad because her childhood was not good either and yet I was jealous and teased her because of it. And no parent stepped in to help either of us and we both needed help. My brother got ALL the attention from our mother.

Just like my mother's brother got all the accolades in her family by my grandmother. Again, I love her with all my heart even now. I would have had no idea about love if she hadn't loved me. But I see that she did the divide and conquer bit too.

Cedar, our families were like they were because the people on top, our parents, did not take the time to learn how to parent or didn't want to parent. Our mothers wanted us to do whatever they wanted; be what they wanted (more in your case; the former in my case). And our sisters picked it up.

You sound like you were a compliant child who tried to please your mother. I don't get why you'd end up being scapegoated. I was the one who asked questions and defied her, so I understand why I was the scapegoat, since there always is a scapegoat when parents are dysfunctional. I don't understand how you got that status.

Oh, well. I'm starting to think that "why" (Y) is just a letter in the alphabet for us.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

It was a brand new idea to me. I was shocked. "But...she's my MOTHER."
He said it didn't matter. That he would do it to his mother if she was cruel to him. That he didn't need mean people in his life, no matter who they were. That he didn't talk to his sister.

That is how D H is.

His boundaries are strung with barbed wire. I do believe there is a gun turret in there somewhere, too. I like that about him. Like your boyfriend, D H feels no guilt about how that makes the other person feel. It would never occur to him and he doesn't care anyway. I am serious. So there is a lesson for us: Other people's feelings are none of our business. We don't get to cheat on that one.

***

I am beginning to separate, to unenmesh from, my mother and my sister.

They do know what they are doing.

It is so glaringly not a matter of believing my way into creating that dinner I am always posting about. If they were there, they would be whispering in the kitchen. Or going through my luggage or searching high and low for my journal, or its equivalent, to justify what they already believe. These kinds of things are huge ethical breeches. What we are doing, every time we say "That is just how mom (or sister) is." is condoning an ethical breech. And every time we say, "But that's my mother (or sister)", our own systems of ethics are requiring a loyalty to those who are cheating both us and themselves that they do not merit.

We assure ourselves that this time too was a mistake, and that they were not aware of (yet another) ethical breech. That is why it is helpful to widen our focus. What are the patterns in the other relationships in their lives, and in our own.

That is where we find places to declare our own names and stand up.

The thing is that I believe everyone is like me.

If I were desperate enough to want to know how someone was working through whatever it was...I still would not be mining their journals or their luggage. I willingly share my process here because it is working for me and because knowing it worked for me might make it okay for someone else to take those same risks here in this place where we are anonymous. I do understand that naked and unfocused is not an attractive thing to be. What I do know is that I would not be by stalking here, as your sister is doing to you SWOT, or justifying an ethical breech of some other nature once I was aware that I was doing that. Our relatives are not hearing pain or confusion to witness for someone struggling with private pain, struggling with issues around which we may be as confused as they are. Our relatives seem to be doing the same things we do, but for them, it is a matter of sneak into vulnerable places with or without our knowledge or permission, with nefarious and unshakeable intent.

That is the part we are not getting. Their motivations are different than ours. They were not hurt by us in some way we cannot figure out; they are different than us. We imagine how confused we would be, how desperately lost we would be, before we would do what they do. What I might learn in someone else's luggage...well, I suppose my sister could determine what were the labels on my clothing, or whether I needed diapers or used drugs in secret or something.

But that is an ethical breech. Whatever her reasoning, things like that are an ethical breach. Maybe, it is like spitting in someone's food and watching them eat it. That same kind of secret power that makes the victim a fool for having trusted you in the first place.

They are neither lost nor stupid nor hurt in the way we understand "hurt".

So that is unenmeshment.

And enmeshment and codependence are when we refuse to believe what we see because that is not a thing we would do. So we excuse whatever ethical breech it was. It's like we become trapped in an ethical discussion of correct response to that last surprising thing they have done while they are sharpening knives in a celebratory way.

And we don't get that piece.

Love is when we are honest. There can be no love without respect. There can be no respect without trust. These people we believe we are in love with together because they are our mothers or sisters are not trustworthy, ethical people. This does not make us priggish librarians of women. (The unspoken condemnation in my mother's description of me as the romantic one. As the one who just cannot think right.) We do not have to adjust ourselves or our thinking to incorporate ethical lapses. We were brought up to believe that not loving is hating.

That is a lie, too.

Even blatant ethical lapses like going through luggage or journals, or like stalking someone in secret ~ we tie ourselves into knots finding some way to excuse them, some way to love them out of it.

So, that's probably codependence or something.

I am a little sad today about who my mom and my sister are.

But that is a very different thing than my enmeshed vision was. It is interesting that I was meeting my need for that family I wanted by believing for the future though the cost was very high in the now.

So what I was doing was living, and determinedly seeing, through hope.

It is good to let go of that.

I wish I'd let it go sooner.

So, if they were to come to my door...Lil's French insulting the king and Jabber's kilt man are the imagery I will use to name myself. My mother's death...I cannot know how that is going to be or feel, so I am going to let go of it. It there had been any way to refigure that, if there had been a way to see clearly that I was wrong or right in detaching from her now, I think I would have found it. Even when I go deep now, I am not finding that truama feeling.

I am seeing from a different place.

I can accept that I don't know how this is going to work with my mother's death. I will be sad, but I am sad, now. But it is a sadness at the way a thing just is. I don't know how to fix the way they seem so determined that everything is and will be. And that is all there is, and I am okay with it because I have no power to change any of it or it would already be changed.

It just is what it is.

No more questions; no more "why".

For maybe the first time in my life, I am okay with it. In my life I was sad, I was hurt and defenseless and lonely and all those things, but that is past. It is not who I am; those things are just what happened to me. It is right that I should feel regret that I do not, and that my children do not, have family that matters. But it's a little thing, now. Just something that happened awhile ago and I am no longer looking back there to find meaning in the story of myself.

There cannot be love without trust. There cannot be trust without mutual respect. I cannot believe those things into existence by creating a way to incorporate the kinds of ethical lapses that began with a mother justifying holding her children in contempt and never letting that go.

She does know. She is as committed to her course of action as I am.

So is my sister.

Together, they are creating and validating what each has always believed, just like I am. In doing so, they are committing ethical breaches all over the place.

As my mother did when she had the stranger take that huge piece of equipment out of the garage where my brother had worked with, and learned from, and come to cherish his father as a man, and not just as a son. And that understanding, those memories, that coming through adolescence and into honest manhood, a father and his son, that is what my mother sought to take control of, sought to, and did destroy, in her own son. And she wanted that to happen in the most shocking way, so her own son would react from a FOG comprised of a grief he probably cannot name the parameters of to this day.

She made her own son a beggar; someone who can only access those memories and strengthenings and cherishings come of his time with his father through her.

Major ethical breech.

That she told me had nothing to do with wondering whether that had been a wrong thing. That was a warning, a triumphant declaration of power that she could, and would, beggar me too. If she were questioning the ethics of her actions, she would have asked for me, or for someone, to have discussed it with her before she did it.

So, there is my answer, is the incident I must access, at the time of my mother's death. That is what was real about my mother in her relationships to her children, and to me. No trust. No respect. No love, and a grim determination to see to it that no love is possible.

Power over. That is the core of the power over mentality. There can never be love, there can never be trust or cherishment or forgiveness.

And as for my sister braying that my mother had changed. That is the second miraculous recovery my mother is supposed to have made. The first was at my father's death. My mother's self proclaimed "change" in that time was to blame my father for the family dynamic.

That is not change.

That is blame and again, is not an ethical thing.

No trust. No respect. Hope, from her children, but not love in the present. Not love in the Now. Hope. And though we are right in believing in hope, there has to come a time when we put that away for the beautiful potential thing that it was.

And let go.

And like you posted to me about yourself SWOT, I do not get to cheat, either.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

Cedar, at the end of the day, we are light years away from our FOO. they feel one way, maybe because they truly believe it or maybe because they don't believe anything that didn't happen to them could have happened to anyone else or maybe because they can't face something they don't want to belive...or it may be about THEM. And they probably think it's about us for their own reasons. I don't doubt their truths. I have never been perfect. The thing I care the most about is that I was able to be a good mother to my own kids, as stated by all my kids except for Goneboy. Goneboy is entitled to his feelings too. I respect him and leave him be as there is still so much love in my life. It may not come from those I grew up with and one child, who came to us at six (and, yes, I think that is significant), but m ost people who have been in my life through the years are still in it. Not that I let many people in.

I was smart that way. I don't think most people are trustworthy or real friends...I've heard too much gossip and negative talk about one's "friends." Cliques are lethal that way.

My ex and I get along, and we didn't have a good marriage, but we DID acknowledge or faults, our duo reasons why the relationship did not work, and we are definitely on good terms now. He calls me about Bart and Princess if he has a question and I do him too.

I still am in touch with my longest, dearest friend from when I was waiting for Princess to arrive from Korea.The only reason we don't see each other often is distance.

My other BBFF passed away. We had called one another sisters and she is still with me. I can feel her presence. As I talk to all my loved ones who have moved on to another world, I talk to her. The most. She was so kind and good and wise and we spent so many hours in her kitchen bouncing off of one another verbally...she told me her issues, I told her mine. We shared our joys and pain. We actually never had an altercation. We loved one an other very much.

When I went to her funeral I bawled like a baby and had to find a place to collect myself. SHE was a loved one that I lost, a terrible loss for me. And I still think about and am FB friends with her kids, who are doing well (as of the last time I checked my FB, which admittedly was a while ago).

She understood me. I understood her. She had been abused so badly that she ended up in foster care at 16 and tried to k ill herslef and, like me, was in a hospital for a while. We knew where each other had come from in a way most don't understand. Yet here she was, a person who others came to for advice and solace, no longer depressed, no longer cowering, in one of the best, most loving marriages I have ever seen and her kids adored her. In the end, she won with love. She wanted that for me too. She got to see me and my husband meet and marry. She died at 50 of breast cancer. It broke my heart.

You have peeps who understand you, even if it is only Copa and me. But we are here. You know that. I feel you are a very good person who just sees the best in everyone, not a cynic like me. You are having more trouble detaching bescause you have more trouble seeing ugliness where there should be love.

Cedar, in the end, if we don't see eye-to-eye with somebody, anybody, and it hurts us, we need to let go unless we can all sit a big roundtable, listen to one another, and discuss our differences and agree to disagree. This will not happen in our situations.

Cedar, I want to share something I heard on a YouTube tape about judging, which I do. I am going to try to hold back on using judging as much as I can from now on because the moderator made sense. She said it is helpful our own mental health if instead of talking about our own sense of "good", "bad," or "evil" we just state the truth about a situation. I'll give the example she gave.

"Mary lied about that so she is a liar and did a bad thing." (It was more eloquently stated than I wrote)

Instead, the psychologist urged you tot hinkj of a less emotion response to the incident and to just state the facts. "Mary lied and there were consequences for that." We don't judge what is bad...or good...or evil. We are not in a position to know. We can state facts. Facts are facts. They are real. The added on "bad" statement is an emotional reaction from us and our own feelings, not a truth that can be proven. We can't prove Mary is "bad."

At the time we are trying not to judge other people, which I hope I can do with some success, we also are told to stop judging the person we judge the harshest of all: OURSELVES! Hehe. Nobody gets the "you are worthless" treatment from me like I give to myself. This is common in those who suffer poor self esteem. I am going to try this on myself too. That will be the herdest task of all, but it makes sense. I'm so tired of telling myself, "You are bad." "You are worthless." Blah, blah, blah.

And I have to stop caring if I am judged. That says more about the person than it says about the judged one. And this includes my own judging. I want to stop. Facts only. We'll see how it goes.

I hope you are feeling good today.

My detaching is going well and I am feeling good.

Take care of yourself today. You. YOU!

 

[Copabanana]

Very sad today but will try briefly to respond.

I don't get why you'd end up being scapegoated.

SWOT, Cedar was scapegoated because of what her mother embodied, not because of characteristics of her own. Neither one nor the other, compliance or questioning, merits abuse.

like spitting in someone's food and watching them eat it.

I feel like this is what my sister did when she robbed my stuff that I stupidly left in her safekeeping. While she demanded money, kind of like protection money, she systematically rifled through and took what of my stuff she wanted (this is when she stole all of my pictures and the little artwork I had collected during my life) even returning to me a down comforter spotted with menstrual blood.

That same kind of secret power that makes the victim a fool for having trusted you in the first place.

Yep, that's me with my sister. And ditto, too, for my mother.

My mother's death...I cannot know how that is going to be or feel, so I am going to let go of it.

Nobody can Cedar.

I know a woman who said to me the first time I met her, at the service for my mother, that she mourned her mother not at all when that mother died, as "she had not been a mother at all."

I recoiled from this woman, then. (Overcome with feelings of loss and guilt about my mother, as I am, still.)

She later told me that her daughter had rejected her after her husband divorced her for her child's best friend's mother who had been her own best friend. The estrangement between mother and daughter lasted decades. And that recently the woman had found a way to have a relationship with this same daughter and her family, despite all that had passed. She chose this, sacrificing much, to have some relationship, with her child and her child's children.

I am thinking now I want this woman as a friend. That she could perhaps understand what I have gone through. And I admire her strength and her honesty, too. Her clarity, too. And her commitment.

So, my point here was, this woman knew her mother had damaged her. And she knows that that was the mother she lost, a mother who had never been much of a mother.

A good mother, she had never had.

She knew that the loss was not of her mother, but of having a loving mother. And she knew that that loss was one of her whole life full. Not the loss of the person who was supposed to have been her mother. To not have a real mother--that had been her great loss. Need I repeat this again? Lest I miss it.

Not the loss of the person who has that name. Different things. And this woman knew it.

I can accept that I don't know how this is going to work with my mother's death.

Yes.

I cannot believe those things into existence by creating a way to incorporate the kinds of ethical lapses that began with a mother justifying holding her children in contempt and never letting that go.

Your mother seems like a person who needs contempt and uses contempt for her own ends (and need), regardless of who and when, even, perhaps, especially against her children. She never lets it go, because that is how she is, who she is. She wants to be this person. And she could not care less. I doubt if it has crossed her mind, even.

She can temporarily suspend this trait if she wants to, if it suits her, for a short time and under hothouse conditions, if to benefit herself, she chooses such. It has nothing to do with her target, good or bad, or mediocre, even if they are her children. Nothing. That is who she is and chooses to be because that is who she is. She never gives it a thought.

Like a tiger.

I used to say when I wanted to get a point across to a person who had difficulty accepting something such as this: Does a tiger have stripes? Do they go after their prey or meditate about it?

huge piece of equipment

Every time I read this, Cedar, I cringe and feel pain in my stomach and heart. My grandfather had a workbench. A huge thing made of oak that had been a counter in his cleaning store. My grandmother and he had worked at that counter for 50 years. I begged my mother for years for that counter.

Until it was no longer there.

Oh, I got rid of it.

I don't know if it went to my sister, then newly remarried, to a man who may have wanted it. Or where, it went.

But that was my mother. She never ever that I can remember kept a commitment she had made to me. Because it cost her nothing, to get rid of that counter. That is who she was.

She chose it. Over and over again.

I could have been Princess Di and she would have chosen it. Because that is who my mother was.

Of course, if there was some reward to her of not betraying somebody she could override that tendency. But there was nothing in her that cared one way or another, if it did not as she saw it benefit her. And at the end of the day, that was her.

so her own son would react from a FOG comprised of a grief he probably cannot name the parameters of to this day.

Yes. To have a parent incapable of holding you in their mind and heart for even something so small as a thing....is indeed worthy of grief. The task of that adult child is to accept that it has nothing at all to do with who she is. The problem with accepting this is even worse.

For a child, even now adult, to accept that their parent does not see them at all in their individuality, is as if to put into question their identity, and for that child, to not have an identity at all, I think.

She made her own son a beggar; someone who can only access those memories and strengthenings and cherishings come of his time with his father through her.

That is what my sister did to me using as justification that her mother had done it to her. And she justifies refusing me something easily copied, a photo, I am sure, because I saw to it that she did not destroy and overpower me in the distribution of my mother's assets.

Because, after all, it was her right to have all that she wished to have...even if it was everything. Because, she was, after all, her mother's daughter.

That was a warning, a triumphant declaration of power that she could, and would, beggar me too.

That is who she is Cedar, glorying in when and how she can hurt her children, when she can, if she wants, whenever she wants. Child abuser. Is there another word for it? And was my mother or SWOT's any different? Not at all.

I am sorry, Cedar and SWOT.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

And if they (my family) did it, it was only because I was either so very horrible and nonredeemable or because they were. I still had my mother's tapes in my head about how I was worthless.

We live and learn.

This rings so true, SWOT.

KFCD, the background music of our lives.

So perhaps the imagery to counter that would be "Getting Stronger Now" from Rocky. And "Halleluiah" the way kd lang sings it, for me. And "Eye of the Tiger". And I even like that Rocky needs to come back, time and time again, to defend a title that no longer means what it meant when he first committed to it. In the final movie, he comes back for what his child's future will be, if he loses.

You know what I like about that Rocky imagery? He shows us how to celebrate the challenge. How to see ourselves giving it our best whatever is reflected back. Not to rail against it. That is what I have been doing; railing against what is. Railing against all those ways they saw me; trying so hard to prove they were wrong, not just about me, but to see in those ways.

Cedar