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Family of Origin
Hey, Cedar, or anyone interested in FOO (Family of Origin) issues. Cedar, WHY NOW???
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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 657033" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>No one dared confront my mother, either. Not even when the person whose reputation she was destroying by naming him filthy names was our own father.</p><p></p><p>Not even then.</p><p></p><p>Once he began going deaf? She berated him the second his back was turned. Right in front of his children. Do you stand up to her? Do you make the father aware of what she is doing <em>right in front of his children?</em> I didn't. I loved him separately from her, and I made the best I could of things as they were. After my father was dead, my mother refused to have a Service for him. He was a veteran, and entitled to the 21 gun salute. He was my father, and entitled to every honor, to every grief, public and private, I felt at the loss of him in my life and in my heart and in all they things we would never say to one another.</p><p></p><p>And she refused. And she was vehement. And D H stepped in and she said: "If you want your name in the paper, <em>pay for it yourself.</em>" And she was sitting at our table, eating our food <em>against my D H's will because of how the death had been handled thus far. But he had her there in our home, for my sake.</em></p><p></p><p><em>And when the decision was made to run an obituary in defiance of her wishes, my mother's fallback position was that she was afraid an old enemy would come to her house and hurt her, if he knew she lived there alone.</em></p><p></p><p><em>And that was a lie, too. But she was newly widowed, and alone, and we deferred to her wishes.</em></p><p></p><p><em>And so, my father never even had an obituary, let alone a 21 gun salute.</em></p><p></p><p>I may still create a memorial for him. But I am not talking to either sib. Or to the enemy sib. I mean, I am talking to him, but not really. I am thinking what to do about that. I will post about it here, when I do. Given the similarities in the stories of all abusive families, what I do will help another of us to be stronger enough, too.</p><p></p><p>There are no heroes, here.</p><p></p><p>Only my mother is a hero, in our family.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Love has always been the enemy. Diametrically opposed to the hatred abusers fuel their stupid realities with, it can make us stronger enough. And so they do everything in their power to kill it, and to kill us. Somehow, unless I can see through a good way, for the potential in all of us to change if nothing else, I am blind.</p><p></p><p>I am fortunate in that.</p><p></p><p>Hatred is addictive. There is a strength, a strong flow, in hatred and rage and resentment. Like all addictive substances, these things will destroy us in the end, as they destroyed our weaker-than-us mothers.</p><p></p><p>It's scary, to go back there.</p><p></p><p>But here we both are.</p><p></p><p>Good.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>One of the things I worked through on that thread that is gone was how I really felt about my sister, about my sister and my mother, and about my brother. What I named what I found ~ bitter, acidic stuff ~ is resentment. I resent what they have, and I do not. I feel excluded. Named and found wanting, judged and found wanting, ridiculed and found wanting. Exiled, like patriarchs were always exiling the woman and the child in the Bible.</p><p></p><p>Or putting children in the fiery furnace and turning up the heat, united in their stand against the usurper, against the one who doesn't belong because there is only so much room, only so much acceptance...<em>only one mother. And she will cut you up as soon as look at you because she does not see you; she can see only herself. She is the Center of the Universe.</em></p><p></p><p>But we are exploring the edges of this thing we were told was what was real. And there are stars and galaxies and mysteries galore out there.</p><p></p><p>Well, what do you know.</p><p></p><p>So, that is how we know what the mother told us was real is a lie.</p><p></p><p>And, kind of like they did in the olden days too, we are named heretic.</p><p></p><p>And you know what happened to them, back in the day.</p><p></p><p>And you know who it was, who came up with that burning heretics at the stake idea.</p><p></p><p>My mother.</p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p>That was the joke.</p><p></p><p>And here is the scary part:</p><p></p><p>Or someone very like her.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>No. Her role was to function in your mother's scheme of hatred and isolation and mistrust. Like a spider's web, SWOT. Every piece of the thing created functions to entrap those the abuser intends to victimize.</p><p></p><p>I am not excusing your sister, or mine. Or either of our brothers.</p><p></p><p>But I do think we cannot declare an ending to the evil mother's pernicious influence until we take our courage in both hands and understand ~ until we really get it ~ just how toxic the environments we grew up in were <em>and continue to be, f</em>or everyone caught in that web that our mothers chose and celebrated and glorified in.</p><p></p><p>Ours is an ugly story.</p><p></p><p>Radical acceptance. It is what it looks like. Fight, SWOT. Those feelings that are overwhelming us now are the mother's valence, are the mother's poisonous intent. That was the flavor, the taint in the very air we breathed, all of our lives. Our sibs are twisted, were twisted, by it too.</p><p></p><p>That doesn't mean we have to like or excuse or forgive them. But it is crucially important that we understand the genesis and the purpose and the tools that were used, to hurt and to weaken us.</p><p></p><p>Then, we can say: F you, mom. And after we say that enough, we can say: Mine is an ugly story. Ours is an ugly, story. I need the strength and the pleasure and the safe harbor of loving family and I don't have it. As surely as the abuse had nothing to do with us, so our healing has nothing to do with them. If they cannot save themselves, then we cannot save them, either. That is a thing I always believed with my whole heart. That we could save one another. But that is not true. I cannot rely on that. My mother is determined that none of us will have witnesses or support or the strength there is in family.</p><p></p><p>So. I will need to rewrite my story. I will have Maya, and learn how she did it. and I will do it, too. D H is correct. I can open and explore those toxic beginnings that I somehow survived as many times as I have the courage to risk it.</p><p></p><p>Toxic <em>by intent.</em> Ugly and unbelievable and scary as can be <em>by intent.</em> But turns out we were very brave little girls. In our secret hearts, we defied out mothers' intents.</p><p></p><p>Bye, mom.</p><p></p><p>Snip.</p><p></p><p>But then, we will need to provide those things we need for ourselves. I haven't done that yet, so I don't know how to do it. I do know that I am vulnerable in certain ways, and that the vulnerability draws predators like freaking flies.</p><p></p><p>That is something to know.</p><p></p><p>So, I have to have a look at the feelings. Resentment. The only answer to jealousy, envy, resentment is to have those things I am jealous of. Jealousy can be a gift. It can show us the way to go, which wind to head into, to create what we need.</p><p></p><p>Too bad that other thread is gone. I was figuring it out as it happened, to me. It was beautifully written; clear in a way this is not.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>My mother did the exact same thing both while my father was alive <em>after my father was dead. </em>And we were grieving that our father was never going to be there for us anymore. </p><p></p><p>And she used that, too.</p><p></p><p>But my father came to me in a dream. All he had was a paper bag, a brown paper bag. And he set sail in a battered old pontoon boat. And he turned around to where I was, standing on a shore somewhere and said: "She will need this." And there were four wooden spoons, SWOT, with beautiful painted porcelain handles, that were part of a salad set I have. (There are only two spoons in the real set, of course.)</p><p></p><p>So I don't know what that meant.</p><p></p><p>But it comforted me.</p><p></p><p>And there are four children, in my family of origin.</p><p></p><p>I always thought the "she" was my mother.</p><p></p><p>It was me, of course.</p><p></p><p>Thanks, Dad. You have faith in me. I will have faith in me too, then.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Look further, SWOT. See the patterns in E's life. Her big personality was grandiosity reflected back onto her from the children whose spirits she broke.</p><p></p><p>That might not be true.</p><p></p><p>I did not know your mom.</p><p></p><p>Except that she sounds so exactly much like mine I can hardly fathom it.</p><p></p><p>So that's a validation, a kind of witnessing for me, too. There are times when I cannot believe that I think this way about someone I should love. I have been broken and raised to believe my thinking is typically not correct, that there is something flawed in me.</p><p></p><p>Hello again, mom.</p><p></p><p>You are looking a little sickly, a little less scary, these days.</p><p></p><p>Snip.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I have posted before about the passionate, vehement hatred my mother holds for my paternal family of origin. But she bears that same intense hatred for her own family of origin. She too insists people are "stupid". There is such contempt in the way she describes why they are all so stupid, or so degenerate, or so impossibly depraved that I am tempted to believe what I believed about them then to this day.</p><p></p><p>I see you.</p><p></p><p><em>I see you back.</em></p><p></p><p>Snip.</p><p></p><p>I have family out there somewhere too, SWOT. I should look them up. Or, create my own. Which I do, all around me, all the time.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It is a really hard thing, to make that decision about whether our own mothers were liars.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Which destroyed their children's abilities to believe in themselves. So there we were, SWOT, vulnerable in every way that mattered. And we lived our lives and we chose for the good and we did the best we knew and we learned new ways and we never turned into them and we never hated them.</p><p></p><p>So, I would say we did an impossible hero's quest quite successfully.</p><p></p><p>Hear the crowd roar as we enter the homestretch? Like American Pharaoh in yesterday's race: stay focused.</p><p></p><p>There is another race yet to be run.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Why doesn't matter. When it is time for us to go back, and to learn how to view our mothers with compassion, then why will matter. For now, when we are in the ring or running the track, why is extraneous to our purpose.</p><p></p><p>For now, it is.</p><p></p><p>Later, we will go back and learn and understand and have compassion for, our mothers.</p><p></p><p>Right now we are not healed enough for that to be safe.</p><p></p><p>For me that is true. Only you can know what is true for you.</p><p></p><p>But for me, that is very true.</p><p></p><p>I cannot afford compassion for my mother. Not yet.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Because it matters. That is why we keep trying and trying to figure it out. But at least for me, I have to take it in small steps. When I uncover the real toxicities in my past, they still lay me low. I become confused; I lose my focus. I feel so...I cannot get to where I am. That is what it feels like. And when I hate that little girl, or that adolescent, or that young mother I was, <em>as I was taught to, the lesson sealed in contempt, </em>so scared and with my mother circling, like a freaking vulture, pieces of rotting flesh in her beak, then I have to stand for myself. I have to witness the feelings for myself. I have to believe myself, and hold myself with compassion. I have to convince myself that I lived, that I am here, witnessing for myself now and so, I was always there. Me, the person I am today <em>after creating my own life, after believing and believing that we all want to be good people, strong people, people who support and strengthen.</em> I was always there for her, SWOT, even when my mother kicked or threatened to burn or hurt those sibs I was supposed to protect and I couldn't stop her. </p><p></p><p>And so I can tell that poor, broken young person who was me that it was the mother who lied.</p><p></p><p>Ugly. So ugly, SWOT. </p><p></p><p>But I know it can be done because we are doing it.</p><p></p><p>On we go.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 657033, member: 17461"] No one dared confront my mother, either. Not even when the person whose reputation she was destroying by naming him filthy names was our own father. Not even then. Once he began going deaf? She berated him the second his back was turned. Right in front of his children. Do you stand up to her? Do you make the father aware of what she is doing [I]right in front of his children?[/I] I didn't. I loved him separately from her, and I made the best I could of things as they were. After my father was dead, my mother refused to have a Service for him. He was a veteran, and entitled to the 21 gun salute. He was my father, and entitled to every honor, to every grief, public and private, I felt at the loss of him in my life and in my heart and in all they things we would never say to one another. And she refused. And she was vehement. And D H stepped in and she said: "If you want your name in the paper, [I]pay for it yourself.[/I]" And she was sitting at our table, eating our food [I]against my D H's will because of how the death had been handled thus far. But he had her there in our home, for my sake.[/I] [I]And when the decision was made to run an obituary in defiance of her wishes, my mother's fallback position was that she was afraid an old enemy would come to her house and hurt her, if he knew she lived there alone.[/I] [I]And that was a lie, too. But she was newly widowed, and alone, and we deferred to her wishes.[/I] [I]And so, my father never even had an obituary, let alone a 21 gun salute.[/I] I may still create a memorial for him. But I am not talking to either sib. Or to the enemy sib. I mean, I am talking to him, but not really. I am thinking what to do about that. I will post about it here, when I do. Given the similarities in the stories of all abusive families, what I do will help another of us to be stronger enough, too. There are no heroes, here. Only my mother is a hero, in our family. *** Love has always been the enemy. Diametrically opposed to the hatred abusers fuel their stupid realities with, it can make us stronger enough. And so they do everything in their power to kill it, and to kill us. Somehow, unless I can see through a good way, for the potential in all of us to change if nothing else, I am blind. I am fortunate in that. Hatred is addictive. There is a strength, a strong flow, in hatred and rage and resentment. Like all addictive substances, these things will destroy us in the end, as they destroyed our weaker-than-us mothers. It's scary, to go back there. But here we both are. Good. *** One of the things I worked through on that thread that is gone was how I really felt about my sister, about my sister and my mother, and about my brother. What I named what I found ~ bitter, acidic stuff ~ is resentment. I resent what they have, and I do not. I feel excluded. Named and found wanting, judged and found wanting, ridiculed and found wanting. Exiled, like patriarchs were always exiling the woman and the child in the Bible. Or putting children in the fiery furnace and turning up the heat, united in their stand against the usurper, against the one who doesn't belong because there is only so much room, only so much acceptance...[I]only one mother. And she will cut you up as soon as look at you because she does not see you; she can see only herself. She is the Center of the Universe.[/I] But we are exploring the edges of this thing we were told was what was real. And there are stars and galaxies and mysteries galore out there. Well, what do you know. So, that is how we know what the mother told us was real is a lie. And, kind of like they did in the olden days too, we are named heretic. And you know what happened to them, back in the day. And you know who it was, who came up with that burning heretics at the stake idea. My mother. :O) That was the joke. And here is the scary part: Or someone very like her. *** No. Her role was to function in your mother's scheme of hatred and isolation and mistrust. Like a spider's web, SWOT. Every piece of the thing created functions to entrap those the abuser intends to victimize. I am not excusing your sister, or mine. Or either of our brothers. But I do think we cannot declare an ending to the evil mother's pernicious influence until we take our courage in both hands and understand ~ until we really get it ~ just how toxic the environments we grew up in were [I]and continue to be, f[/I]or everyone caught in that web that our mothers chose and celebrated and glorified in. Ours is an ugly story. Radical acceptance. It is what it looks like. Fight, SWOT. Those feelings that are overwhelming us now are the mother's valence, are the mother's poisonous intent. That was the flavor, the taint in the very air we breathed, all of our lives. Our sibs are twisted, were twisted, by it too. That doesn't mean we have to like or excuse or forgive them. But it is crucially important that we understand the genesis and the purpose and the tools that were used, to hurt and to weaken us. Then, we can say: F you, mom. And after we say that enough, we can say: Mine is an ugly story. Ours is an ugly, story. I need the strength and the pleasure and the safe harbor of loving family and I don't have it. As surely as the abuse had nothing to do with us, so our healing has nothing to do with them. If they cannot save themselves, then we cannot save them, either. That is a thing I always believed with my whole heart. That we could save one another. But that is not true. I cannot rely on that. My mother is determined that none of us will have witnesses or support or the strength there is in family. So. I will need to rewrite my story. I will have Maya, and learn how she did it. and I will do it, too. D H is correct. I can open and explore those toxic beginnings that I somehow survived as many times as I have the courage to risk it. Toxic [I]by intent.[/I] Ugly and unbelievable and scary as can be [I]by intent.[/I] But turns out we were very brave little girls. In our secret hearts, we defied out mothers' intents. Bye, mom. Snip. But then, we will need to provide those things we need for ourselves. I haven't done that yet, so I don't know how to do it. I do know that I am vulnerable in certain ways, and that the vulnerability draws predators like freaking flies. That is something to know. So, I have to have a look at the feelings. Resentment. The only answer to jealousy, envy, resentment is to have those things I am jealous of. Jealousy can be a gift. It can show us the way to go, which wind to head into, to create what we need. Too bad that other thread is gone. I was figuring it out as it happened, to me. It was beautifully written; clear in a way this is not. My mother did the exact same thing both while my father was alive [I]after my father was dead. [/I]And we were grieving that our father was never going to be there for us anymore. And she used that, too. But my father came to me in a dream. All he had was a paper bag, a brown paper bag. And he set sail in a battered old pontoon boat. And he turned around to where I was, standing on a shore somewhere and said: "She will need this." And there were four wooden spoons, SWOT, with beautiful painted porcelain handles, that were part of a salad set I have. (There are only two spoons in the real set, of course.) So I don't know what that meant. But it comforted me. And there are four children, in my family of origin. I always thought the "she" was my mother. It was me, of course. Thanks, Dad. You have faith in me. I will have faith in me too, then. Look further, SWOT. See the patterns in E's life. Her big personality was grandiosity reflected back onto her from the children whose spirits she broke. That might not be true. I did not know your mom. Except that she sounds so exactly much like mine I can hardly fathom it. So that's a validation, a kind of witnessing for me, too. There are times when I cannot believe that I think this way about someone I should love. I have been broken and raised to believe my thinking is typically not correct, that there is something flawed in me. Hello again, mom. You are looking a little sickly, a little less scary, these days. Snip. I have posted before about the passionate, vehement hatred my mother holds for my paternal family of origin. But she bears that same intense hatred for her own family of origin. She too insists people are "stupid". There is such contempt in the way she describes why they are all so stupid, or so degenerate, or so impossibly depraved that I am tempted to believe what I believed about them then to this day. I see you. [I]I see you back.[/I] Snip. I have family out there somewhere too, SWOT. I should look them up. Or, create my own. Which I do, all around me, all the time. It is a really hard thing, to make that decision about whether our own mothers were liars. Which destroyed their children's abilities to believe in themselves. So there we were, SWOT, vulnerable in every way that mattered. And we lived our lives and we chose for the good and we did the best we knew and we learned new ways and we never turned into them and we never hated them. So, I would say we did an impossible hero's quest quite successfully. Hear the crowd roar as we enter the homestretch? Like American Pharaoh in yesterday's race: stay focused. There is another race yet to be run. Why doesn't matter. When it is time for us to go back, and to learn how to view our mothers with compassion, then why will matter. For now, when we are in the ring or running the track, why is extraneous to our purpose. For now, it is. Later, we will go back and learn and understand and have compassion for, our mothers. Right now we are not healed enough for that to be safe. For me that is true. Only you can know what is true for you. But for me, that is very true. I cannot afford compassion for my mother. Not yet. Because it matters. That is why we keep trying and trying to figure it out. But at least for me, I have to take it in small steps. When I uncover the real toxicities in my past, they still lay me low. I become confused; I lose my focus. I feel so...I cannot get to where I am. That is what it feels like. And when I hate that little girl, or that adolescent, or that young mother I was, [I]as I was taught to, the lesson sealed in contempt, [/I]so scared and with my mother circling, like a freaking vulture, pieces of rotting flesh in her beak, then I have to stand for myself. I have to witness the feelings for myself. I have to believe myself, and hold myself with compassion. I have to convince myself that I lived, that I am here, witnessing for myself now and so, I was always there. Me, the person I am today [I]after creating my own life, after believing and believing that we all want to be good people, strong people, people who support and strengthen.[/I] I was always there for her, SWOT, even when my mother kicked or threatened to burn or hurt those sibs I was supposed to protect and I couldn't stop her. And so I can tell that poor, broken young person who was me that it was the mother who lied. Ugly. So ugly, SWOT. But I know it can be done because we are doing it. On we go. Cedar [/QUOTE]
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Hey, Cedar, or anyone interested in FOO (Family of Origin) issues. Cedar, WHY NOW???
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