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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: 657948" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>I believe this to be true, Copa.</p><p></p><p>Six years ago, my mother began spending the winter months with my sister. I am not sure how to assess the things that happened next. Like me, my sister may always have needed affirmation from her mother. It was never given. Then, finally, my sister married a man with some money and some stuff. And my mother began to thaw toward her. (My sister is very generous with her time and with material things too, with my mother. More generous than me, for sure.) And after my father's death, my mother and my sister developed a strange intimacy designed, so it seems, to exclude the other sibs, the other grands. I was the oldest of three children and then, when I was six, another brother was born. My grandmother told me, when I was little, that it was my job to protect the other sibs. That happened prior to the youngest sib's birth. Whether our grandmother knew what was happening with our mother or not, I think I took on the role of protector at that time and never did let it go. </p><p></p><p>I also mothered my sister and brothers, physically and emotionally to the degree I was able, <em>and I wanted to do that.</em> It was a thing I could do, a counter to what my mother did and to the strange chaos of who she was.</p><p></p><p>So, it has taken me this many years to suspect and then see and then, believe what I see, happening with my sister and my mother. Or maybe it has always been this way between them, and I am only just now healthy enough to recognize and stand up to it. In any event, last year I refused to have anything to do with my mother, or with my sister, when my mother was here for the summer. My brother became upset with me for that.</p><p></p><p>This is the second time something like this has happened. The first time, there was no contact between myself and my family of origin <em>other than my sister </em>for five years. I still am not certain why that time happened. I did not choose it. We had called to invite my parents for dinner and my mother said no and then: "I told you I was going to do this."</p><p></p><p>And as I see it, now as I post this for you and for me and for all of us, that was an incident of abuse that my mother enacted. Of course it was. That is why I feel shock and surprise and <em>ashamed</em>. That is why I feel powerless and vulnerable and out of control regarding that terribly hurtful thing that happened, then.</p><p></p><p>And I never knew why, and I don't know how or why, any of it happened to this day <em>and that is the flavor of abuse</em>.</p><p></p><p>And I never got that before this morning, either.</p><p></p><p>But I do know a person should be able to trace why a thing happens <em>or that person (me) is not responsible for having let herself and her family down. Is not responsible for having been "not enough", somehow.</em></p><p></p><p>Another fine insight for me from this thread.</p><p></p><p>I see you.</p><p></p><p><em>I see you back. </em></p><p></p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>But I continued to see and to hear from and to keep contact with my sister. We would talk about it all the time. She would tell me how much my father missed me, and how wrong it was for the family to have been split in this way.... And about how my mother said that if Cedar did not want to be part of this family then this family wanted no part of her.... It wasn't until the events of the past six years that I realized <em>my sister was staying with my mother the last time this happened, too.</em> So, I began having a look at what was, without compassion for my sister or my mother. It became more and more blatantly obvious that they were doing what it looked like they were doing.</p><p></p><p>I was pretty surprised that time, too. So I didn't believe it, of course. But it kept being the only explanation that could hold all the pieces of what was happening to all of us.</p><p></p><p>However I feel toward my sister <em>she hates me.</em></p><p></p><p>Well, you could blow me over with a feather.</p><p></p><p>SWOT, I thought you were the only one with sister issues. It's just like that time about verbally abusive adult children. And at first I didn't believe it and then, I did. Or when you would post about categorizing and identifying emotional illness in our families of origin. And I was so uncomfortable with that, but it helped me so much to stand up ~ to have the beginning of a place to stand up from.</p><p></p><p>Yay for me that I stuck with it and yay for you, too. And welcome to Copa, and off we go. Almost to the Wizard's place, now. Still in the poppy field, but we can see that freaking castle in the distance.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>My sister and my mom unite in hating me, glory in it. The reward system fueling this particular dysfunction would go like this: For the mother, a permanent wedge between the siblings <em>especially between the siblings and the sibling that is like me</em>.<em> </em>Because I am willing to advise, to forgive a thousand times, to hear any secret and never reveal it. I hold steady for tears. I make dinners and celebrate their presence and celebrate their children and celebrate their coming <em>home</em>.</p><p></p><p>And it makes sense that my mother, who refused for so long to host or recognize <em>or attend</em> any holiday or family event, any event that would celebrate us and our families and being family ~ it makes sense that she would hate that.</p><p></p><p>Insight # whatever this one is.</p><p></p><p>She is such a black and wizened old thing, still so bitter. I hate her, now. That is why I see her that way, I suppose. But man, she looks like a kindly, blue eyed angel with the prettiest white hair, my mother. Which imagery will hold true over time?</p><p></p><p><em>Both; because both are true. Like a living Dorian Gray, my mother is not who she appears to be. I will love the beautiful mother but watch her eyes. </em></p><p></p><p>I see you.</p><p></p><p><em>I see you back.</em></p><p></p><p><em>***</em></p><p></p><p>But I am not the mother, and this must be why my sister hates me. <em>It would explain why she did what she did to my daughter. It would explain why my sister feels differently about my children than I do about hers. She may hate my children the same way she hates me and for the same reason: I am and I am not, the mother she needs.</em></p><p></p><p>What an extraordinary insight; what an extraordinary thing to have realized.</p><p></p><p>Of course.</p><p></p><p>All the pieces falling into place, all the strangenesses, too.</p><p></p><p>And this is why they so despise D H; and why they seem to despise our lifestyle and our stuff. Which makes sense, because I am invulnerable to them with him at my side, <em>unless I betray both him and myself. </em>Which I have, pretty routinely, been doing. In all these years of my marriage, my sister could do no wrong. <em>Neither could my mother, now that I think of it on this second rereading before posting. </em>But then when I took another look at things from this new perspective I have been working so hard to achieve, it turned out she has been a total biatch. And I just kept not seeing it or something.</p><p></p><p>Huh.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I'm sorry, Copa. <em>We don't get to have sisters, either.</em></p><p></p><p>It is beginning to feel right to me to understand my sister used and manipulated and deserted me, Copa! I still can't believe this could be, but there it is. Even that my sister <em>who is sixty years old Copa</em>, played those notes regarding 1) the only person, along with our grandmother, who loved her and 2) that she was only doing what I taught her, forgiving and understanding and believing in our mother...that's cold, Copa. Like a magician pulling progressively more startlingly scarlet scarves out of a hat, my sister pulled out reasons and rationales for what our situation is with amazing rapidity and dexterity <em>one after the other, Copa.</em> She ended with the statements about loving and forgiveness <em>because they have never not worked, before.</em></p><p></p><p><em>And your sister used those same techniques almost word for word and that blows me away.</em></p><p></p><p><em>I need to be very aware of the way this sister hates and hurts me, and of just how she gets in.</em></p><p></p><p>So do you, Copa. Even in how we think about where our sisters are, in how we think about ourselves in regard to what has happened between our sisters and ourselves.</p><p></p><p>D H has told me repeatedly to beware of my sister once my mother is gone. He believes I will have no defense against my sister if D H dies, or if we are divorced.</p><p></p><p>We need to be wise, and we need to be wary where our sisters are concerned. Just as we cannot see our children as the adults they are sometimes, so we do not see the sisters we mothered and protected as adults. <em>But they see us, Copa. With crystal clarity.</em> Here again, it is a matter of action, not words. Our sisters are very good with words that will leave us dancing, like princesses on strings, Copa.</p><p></p><p>I still can hardly believe what I believe.</p><p></p><p>I am so surprised.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I am sorry, Copa. It must seem very lonely to you. I feel that way too, sometimes.</p><p></p><p>But I think you did the right thing, Copa.</p><p></p><p>Between the things SWOT has shared, what I am beginning to see where my sister and mother are concerned and now, your sister's issues too...this has to be a fairly typical pattern in dysfunctional families.</p><p></p><p>Huh.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>That is the strangest thing, Copa. I was thinking thoughts just like those, yesterday. That though I was willing to stand in for our mother, and though my sister may have needed mothering so badly that she was willing to accept me as stand in for our real mother...I was never the authentic mother she needed. I am not her mother. Maybe that is why she hates me as she does. Maybe that explains my mother and my sister uniting to create this society of exclusivity. My mother always did hate me on so many levels; my sister must, too.</p><p></p><p>I feel badly, for myself.</p><p></p><p>It's not that I can't look at it. I am just so surprised that it could be so. But when I look at events, at the real things that have happened, I see that this interpretation of things must be correct.</p><p></p><p>All the pieces fit.</p><p></p><p>A clinker, not a coin of gold, after all.</p><p></p><p>Well, how do you like that.</p><p></p><p>Thank you for sharing at this level, Copa. Between seeing what happened to you and to SWOT and now, what appears to have been happening to me, I am putting the pieces together. That is why the usual tricks are not working this time, between my sister and my mother and me. Because of the work we do, here.</p><p></p><p>Good.</p><p></p><p>One less thing.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Well, I don't know, Copa. I only know there is something not right, here. But you are very right about strength or happy or security. That rings very true.</p><p></p><p>There are so many separate things here I have never believed. So, these things are abusive incidents, too. D H says I have allowed my sister to abuse me. In the classic sense of emotional manipulation and abuse, done to destroy the abused person.</p><p></p><p>He may be right.</p><p></p><p>I am so surprised.</p><p></p><p>These kinds of thoughts you have validated for me Copa, have given me the validation I need to continue working through my vulnerability to my sister and my mother.</p><p></p><p>Thank you.</p><p></p><p>This site is amazing.</p><p></p><p>How could it be that you and SWOT could both come along now, and all of us at that same place in our process? Our mothers, our sisters, ourselves awakening.</p><p></p><p>Good, good work I am doing.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>My sister hates me because I am her mom, but I'm not; she hates my children as though they were her siblings.</p><p></p><p>And that explains the FB stalking thing that happened when daughter was so ill.</p><p></p><p>My head is spinning.</p><p></p><p>I need to do this; need these issues clarified because the next confrontation will be mother and sister, together.</p><p></p><p>And I will have to be very strong, in my heart, and in my head.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p><p></p><p>My mother returns to a home on a lake near the lake we are on, for the summer months. My sister will visit. Unless the mother has the man there again that she had there the year after my father's death. My sister hates this man so passionately.</p><p></p><p>Now I see that piece, see how all these separate pieces create the seamless whole, smooth as silk.</p><p></p><p>Crystal. </p><p></p><p>Ringing crystal.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 657948, member: 17461"] I believe this to be true, Copa. Six years ago, my mother began spending the winter months with my sister. I am not sure how to assess the things that happened next. Like me, my sister may always have needed affirmation from her mother. It was never given. Then, finally, my sister married a man with some money and some stuff. And my mother began to thaw toward her. (My sister is very generous with her time and with material things too, with my mother. More generous than me, for sure.) And after my father's death, my mother and my sister developed a strange intimacy designed, so it seems, to exclude the other sibs, the other grands. I was the oldest of three children and then, when I was six, another brother was born. My grandmother told me, when I was little, that it was my job to protect the other sibs. That happened prior to the youngest sib's birth. Whether our grandmother knew what was happening with our mother or not, I think I took on the role of protector at that time and never did let it go. I also mothered my sister and brothers, physically and emotionally to the degree I was able, [I]and I wanted to do that.[/I] It was a thing I could do, a counter to what my mother did and to the strange chaos of who she was. So, it has taken me this many years to suspect and then see and then, believe what I see, happening with my sister and my mother. Or maybe it has always been this way between them, and I am only just now healthy enough to recognize and stand up to it. In any event, last year I refused to have anything to do with my mother, or with my sister, when my mother was here for the summer. My brother became upset with me for that. This is the second time something like this has happened. The first time, there was no contact between myself and my family of origin [I]other than my sister [/I]for five years. I still am not certain why that time happened. I did not choose it. We had called to invite my parents for dinner and my mother said no and then: "I told you I was going to do this." And as I see it, now as I post this for you and for me and for all of us, that was an incident of abuse that my mother enacted. Of course it was. That is why I feel shock and surprise and [I]ashamed[/I]. That is why I feel powerless and vulnerable and out of control regarding that terribly hurtful thing that happened, then. And I never knew why, and I don't know how or why, any of it happened to this day [I]and that is the flavor of abuse[/I]. And I never got that before this morning, either. But I do know a person should be able to trace why a thing happens [I]or that person (me) is not responsible for having let herself and her family down. Is not responsible for having been "not enough", somehow.[/I] Another fine insight for me from this thread. I see you. [I]I see you back. [/I] *** But I continued to see and to hear from and to keep contact with my sister. We would talk about it all the time. She would tell me how much my father missed me, and how wrong it was for the family to have been split in this way.... And about how my mother said that if Cedar did not want to be part of this family then this family wanted no part of her.... It wasn't until the events of the past six years that I realized [I]my sister was staying with my mother the last time this happened, too.[/I] So, I began having a look at what was, without compassion for my sister or my mother. It became more and more blatantly obvious that they were doing what it looked like they were doing. I was pretty surprised that time, too. So I didn't believe it, of course. But it kept being the only explanation that could hold all the pieces of what was happening to all of us. However I feel toward my sister [I]she hates me.[/I] Well, you could blow me over with a feather. SWOT, I thought you were the only one with sister issues. It's just like that time about verbally abusive adult children. And at first I didn't believe it and then, I did. Or when you would post about categorizing and identifying emotional illness in our families of origin. And I was so uncomfortable with that, but it helped me so much to stand up ~ to have the beginning of a place to stand up from. Yay for me that I stuck with it and yay for you, too. And welcome to Copa, and off we go. Almost to the Wizard's place, now. Still in the poppy field, but we can see that freaking castle in the distance. *** My sister and my mom unite in hating me, glory in it. The reward system fueling this particular dysfunction would go like this: For the mother, a permanent wedge between the siblings [I]especially between the siblings and the sibling that is like me[/I].[I] [/I]Because I am willing to advise, to forgive a thousand times, to hear any secret and never reveal it. I hold steady for tears. I make dinners and celebrate their presence and celebrate their children and celebrate their coming [I]home[/I]. And it makes sense that my mother, who refused for so long to host or recognize [I]or attend[/I] any holiday or family event, any event that would celebrate us and our families and being family ~ it makes sense that she would hate that. Insight # whatever this one is. She is such a black and wizened old thing, still so bitter. I hate her, now. That is why I see her that way, I suppose. But man, she looks like a kindly, blue eyed angel with the prettiest white hair, my mother. Which imagery will hold true over time? [I]Both; because both are true. Like a living Dorian Gray, my mother is not who she appears to be. I will love the beautiful mother but watch her eyes. [/I] I see you. [I]I see you back.[/I] [I]***[/I] But I am not the mother, and this must be why my sister hates me. [I]It would explain why she did what she did to my daughter. It would explain why my sister feels differently about my children than I do about hers. She may hate my children the same way she hates me and for the same reason: I am and I am not, the mother she needs.[/I] What an extraordinary insight; what an extraordinary thing to have realized. Of course. All the pieces falling into place, all the strangenesses, too. And this is why they so despise D H; and why they seem to despise our lifestyle and our stuff. Which makes sense, because I am invulnerable to them with him at my side, [I]unless I betray both him and myself. [/I]Which I have, pretty routinely, been doing. In all these years of my marriage, my sister could do no wrong. [I]Neither could my mother, now that I think of it on this second rereading before posting. [/I]But then when I took another look at things from this new perspective I have been working so hard to achieve, it turned out she has been a total biatch. And I just kept not seeing it or something. Huh. *** I'm sorry, Copa. [I]We don't get to have sisters, either.[/I] It is beginning to feel right to me to understand my sister used and manipulated and deserted me, Copa! I still can't believe this could be, but there it is. Even that my sister [I]who is sixty years old Copa[/I], played those notes regarding 1) the only person, along with our grandmother, who loved her and 2) that she was only doing what I taught her, forgiving and understanding and believing in our mother...that's cold, Copa. Like a magician pulling progressively more startlingly scarlet scarves out of a hat, my sister pulled out reasons and rationales for what our situation is with amazing rapidity and dexterity [I]one after the other, Copa.[/I] She ended with the statements about loving and forgiveness [I]because they have never not worked, before.[/I] [I]And your sister used those same techniques almost word for word and that blows me away.[/I] [I]I need to be very aware of the way this sister hates and hurts me, and of just how she gets in.[/I] So do you, Copa. Even in how we think about where our sisters are, in how we think about ourselves in regard to what has happened between our sisters and ourselves. D H has told me repeatedly to beware of my sister once my mother is gone. He believes I will have no defense against my sister if D H dies, or if we are divorced. We need to be wise, and we need to be wary where our sisters are concerned. Just as we cannot see our children as the adults they are sometimes, so we do not see the sisters we mothered and protected as adults. [I]But they see us, Copa. With crystal clarity.[/I] Here again, it is a matter of action, not words. Our sisters are very good with words that will leave us dancing, like princesses on strings, Copa. I still can hardly believe what I believe. I am so surprised. I am sorry, Copa. It must seem very lonely to you. I feel that way too, sometimes. But I think you did the right thing, Copa. Between the things SWOT has shared, what I am beginning to see where my sister and mother are concerned and now, your sister's issues too...this has to be a fairly typical pattern in dysfunctional families. Huh. That is the strangest thing, Copa. I was thinking thoughts just like those, yesterday. That though I was willing to stand in for our mother, and though my sister may have needed mothering so badly that she was willing to accept me as stand in for our real mother...I was never the authentic mother she needed. I am not her mother. Maybe that is why she hates me as she does. Maybe that explains my mother and my sister uniting to create this society of exclusivity. My mother always did hate me on so many levels; my sister must, too. I feel badly, for myself. It's not that I can't look at it. I am just so surprised that it could be so. But when I look at events, at the real things that have happened, I see that this interpretation of things must be correct. All the pieces fit. A clinker, not a coin of gold, after all. Well, how do you like that. Thank you for sharing at this level, Copa. Between seeing what happened to you and to SWOT and now, what appears to have been happening to me, I am putting the pieces together. That is why the usual tricks are not working this time, between my sister and my mother and me. Because of the work we do, here. Good. One less thing. Well, I don't know, Copa. I only know there is something not right, here. But you are very right about strength or happy or security. That rings very true. There are so many separate things here I have never believed. So, these things are abusive incidents, too. D H says I have allowed my sister to abuse me. In the classic sense of emotional manipulation and abuse, done to destroy the abused person. He may be right. I am so surprised. These kinds of thoughts you have validated for me Copa, have given me the validation I need to continue working through my vulnerability to my sister and my mother. Thank you. This site is amazing. How could it be that you and SWOT could both come along now, and all of us at that same place in our process? Our mothers, our sisters, ourselves awakening. Good, good work I am doing. *** My sister hates me because I am her mom, but I'm not; she hates my children as though they were her siblings. And that explains the FB stalking thing that happened when daughter was so ill. My head is spinning. I need to do this; need these issues clarified because the next confrontation will be mother and sister, together. And I will have to be very strong, in my heart, and in my head. Cedar My mother returns to a home on a lake near the lake we are on, for the summer months. My sister will visit. Unless the mother has the man there again that she had there the year after my father's death. My sister hates this man so passionately. Now I see that piece, see how all these separate pieces create the seamless whole, smooth as silk. Crystal. Ringing crystal. Cedar [/QUOTE]
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Hey, Cedar, or anyone interested in FOO (Family of Origin) issues. Cedar, WHY NOW???
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