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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: 658138" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>And that is why, each time I touched on those true things that I know about exclusion, and about golden child grands (thank you for that imagery, SWOT), my sister literally exploded into raging and tears. Because she is doing those very things, and she is doing them on purpose <em>and she knows it.</em> Only, I am not supposed to know that about her. I am supposed to believe in her, so she can do what she wants to all of us, unimpeded. And that is why she pulled out those sure fire phrases about my having taught her and protected her in the past. </p><p></p><p>And about loving our mother into having the capacity to love us; to be our mother. That would be pure Cedar, for sure. I still think that must be true. Look what we are accomplishing here, standing for and witnessing for one another.</p><p></p><p>And I will admit that I can still feel that pain in her voice. And that makes me feel shaky, like a bad person who is deserting her or something. Like a person who was never enough, or who was fraudulent and wanted to hurt or destroy her all along, and that is why all these bad things happened to all of us. It's like a deepening spiral of self condemnation where one untrue possible thing cascades into a thousand untrue things that look pretty true, all at once because I can't even see straight.</p><p></p><p>FOG, right?</p><p></p><p>So we capitulate. We choose loving them enough to love them into how we believe it could be, for all of us.</p><p></p><p>But they exclude, my mother and my sister.</p><p></p><p>And that is not what the picture is supposed to look or feel like. I mean, it's one thing for everyone to be sort of floundering around trying to put things back together. That is what we are doing now, in the family D H and I created. And sometimes, that looks pretty good. And sometimes, it looks really crummy and like we are not going to make it. But I read somewhere: Real boats rock. So, I think that means we are being honest to the degree we are capable of, today.</p><p></p><p>**</p><p></p><p>So, that is how I could know that whatever it was they (mom and my sister) were doing, it was not creating that family I still, some stupid somehow, believe could happen for all of us.</p><p></p><p>But it will never happen this way they are doing it, no matter how many pictures there are, and no matter the words they use to describe what they are doing, what they are sacrificing to do, for all of our sakes. My sister also exploded over how much it has cost her, and how I was not there when I should have been, and how I have never been there and etc. And she said her marriage was falling apart and whatever else she said. And I felt pretty guilty there too, because <em>she used to be able to call me, and to tell me how she saw what was happening between she and her husband, and I would respond to the pain in her.</em>) </p><p></p><p>And would invariably validate her point of view and tell her she was good and how to maybe see things differently and etc.</p><p></p><p>And D H would always get so mad at me about that, because my sister would call, or not call for months, any time day or night and I would feel as driven to be there for her as I would be, for one of my own kids or grands.</p><p></p><p>And I never could see why he would be upset with me because, and this is just what I would say to him: That is my sister.</p><p></p><p>And I remember your having posted that your sister did this to you too, SWOT.</p><p></p><p>But I suspect it, now. All those things she said in that phone call; all those words she chose. Because here is the thing: Though I was on pins and needles about when she would call, or whether she would call or just show up at the door or whether none of this would happen...she did know. And of course she had prepared herself in advance for how she would respond, whatever my response to her was.</p><p></p><p>And I just got that right this minute.</p><p></p><p>It was a manipulation. All of it. The whole thing. What she really wanted from me had nothing to do with family unity. She does not want my mother to have that man there again this summer. She said something about that in her phone call, too. I think she may have started the call with that and that is when I said whatever I said that caused the first explosion.</p><p></p><p>I see that.</p><p></p><p>D H helped me with that part.</p><p></p><p>And about those pictures I still have of my mother and my sister, separately or together (thank you Copa) for this important piece. I could see those things D H has been trying to tell me were true things, and that the way I was seeing my FOO was not a true thing, through your postings about the pictures you keep of your mother. </p><p></p><p>Those pictures weaken us because they seem to be proof that we are thinking ~ well, not to sound stupid here, but sometimes the voice changes to a younger time when we are working through something hurtful.</p><p></p><p>When we are touching, again and again, a place where we were hurt that this thing, these pictures, represent in the real world of here and now.</p><p></p><p>And what those pictures represented for me, and maybe they do for you too Copa, is that as my mom and my sister seemed to be doing this thing, seemed to be making loving family, the wrong person, the person who was not and never had been and never could be enough, was me.</p><p></p><p>So maybe my mother (and my sister?) had been right about me, all along.</p><p></p><p>So maybe, every time we see those pictures, we condemn ourselves, one more time and forever, over and over again, for not being the person who was enough to have brought our mothers to love us the way they did when they were beautiful when we were little. And we did not know then that they were happy because they were going out somewhere, and that it never had a thing to do with us, at all.</p><p></p><p>We never did get to be enough, even in those moments we have clung to, all our adult lives.</p><p></p><p>I think that could be true. I mean, I'm fuzzy on the edges of it, but I think that could be true.</p><p></p><p>SWOT posted to us that she had destroyed pictures of herself as a child.</p><p></p><p>Oh, SWOT. I wish you could have those pictures of that beautiful little girl you must surely have been back. You could love her so much, now.</p><p></p><p>*** </p><p></p><p>Because the true thing here is that there were so many, many times when our mothers were neither beautiful, nor happy, to see us.</p><p></p><p>Here is another therapy piece coming up pretty often lately. Might as well have at it, now.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>So, I was like, eight. I was sick. I stayed home from school. I was sick enough that I stayed in bed all day. There was a repainted white dresser beside the bed and for some reason, I ran my thumb along the edges of a place where the paint was peeling, and peeled off more paint.</p><p></p><p>More strips of white paint.</p><p></p><p>And when my mother got home that day and came to check on me (we had a babysitter during the day) and she saw what I had done, she made me eat the strips of paint on the floor beside the dresser. And there was hair and dust in them.</p><p></p><p>And I was sick.</p><p></p><p>And she was so mad.</p><p></p><p>And it makes me feel weak, to remember her, so big and so mad and coming right for me, just lying there in my bed like a sick person instead of being ~ instead of forgetting to be afraid of my mother.</p><p></p><p>Instead of forgetting that.</p><p></p><p>This attaches to a time when she burst into my bedroom (I was either six or maybe,seven) and ~ boom ~ strangled me. I can still feel the bed behind the backs of my knees and crashing down. And I feel the giving up, the not being able to draw breath and not even caring any more, about that. A therapist asked me once why I thought she stopped. I said probably because she knew she would be caught.</p><p></p><p>Someone would know.</p><p></p><p>I was six, then. Or I was seven. So that is a pretty little person to be, to have someone so big strangle you like that.</p><p></p><p>And yet, all along, I knew, the whole time, that other people thought I was this really pretty little girl.</p><p></p><p>So, you see the core of that conflict we are dealing with now, as we age and we are no longer seeing that finer reality reflected ~ we are no longer being validated in the same way, in the outer world as we were when we were little girls, or when we were beautiful young women ~ which every young woman is. And if we are attracting attention in that way, or if someone insists that we are, like my mother did that day at WalMart, then all we have left, since we know we are no longer legitimately, perfectly beautiful in the way we were when we were young women, then all we have left is what our mothers taught us was true.</p><p></p><p>Strangled.</p><p></p><p>White paint strips.</p><p></p><p>Crying brother. Helplessness; cowardice. So utterly an admission of powerlessness. </p><p></p><p>I am afraid, so afraid, too.</p><p></p><p>Sorry for the ugly in these stories. Thank you so much for providing a safe place for me to be that ugly little girl, that ugly/not ugly/only how I look matters young girl or young woman. </p><p></p><p>Ours is an ugly story.</p><p></p><p>But at least now, we know what it is.</p><p></p><p>And we know who wrote it.</p><p></p><p>I see you.</p><p></p><p><em>I see you, mom. I see you back.</em></p><p></p><p>Not to be too big a weirdo here, but I am bringing in Maya and the lady from Matrix and Lisa to see you, too.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Maybe that is why I have picked the eyes of two black ladies to see these things through. Because they have been through similar things themselves, and have come through it.</p><p>And because of their race, they have lived that kind of global condemnation that has nothing to do with what you did, and everything to do with what was already believed about you before you were ever even born. And you just sort of stumble over it one day, that they hate you for something you cannot help being.</p><p></p><p>And who you are, who you might be or might have been, has nothing to do with it because according to your own freaking mother, you are only that thing that they see, and nothing more.</p><p></p><p>But Maya is more.</p><p></p><p>So, there you go, then.</p><p></p><p>And Lisa was chosen as witness because of the English concept of fair play. It would not matter to her that I was as I was. It would be the principle of the thing. That is how the Lisa witness would know, without question, that what my mother did to me, and to all of us, was wrong.</p><p></p><p>So, those were pretty good witnesses to choose.</p><p></p><p>Lisa's take on everything I show her, or ask her opinion on: "Unacceptable."</p><p></p><p>Just that.</p><p></p><p>Not even any emotion. Just utter surprise at the wrongness of these things.</p><p></p><p>"Unacceptable."</p><p></p><p>And that has been working really well for me, in conjunction with the Maya witness and the black lady from Matrix witness.</p><p></p><p>On we go.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Thank heaven this site is anonymous.</p><p></p><p>I swear, there are people who know me? Who think I am perfectly, rationally, totally sane. And I am, because I can go there or not.</p><p></p><p>That is the difference.</p><p></p><p>Locus of control.</p><p></p><p>Maybe that is why all these traumatic things have gone unexamined until we had what we needed to undo them.</p><p></p><p>Because we may not have come out of it sane, otherwise.</p><p></p><p>So, we did good, then.</p><p></p><p>Here we all are, upright and accounted for. </p><p></p><p>On we go.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 658138, member: 17461"] And that is why, each time I touched on those true things that I know about exclusion, and about golden child grands (thank you for that imagery, SWOT), my sister literally exploded into raging and tears. Because she is doing those very things, and she is doing them on purpose [I]and she knows it.[/I] Only, I am not supposed to know that about her. I am supposed to believe in her, so she can do what she wants to all of us, unimpeded. And that is why she pulled out those sure fire phrases about my having taught her and protected her in the past. And about loving our mother into having the capacity to love us; to be our mother. That would be pure Cedar, for sure. I still think that must be true. Look what we are accomplishing here, standing for and witnessing for one another. And I will admit that I can still feel that pain in her voice. And that makes me feel shaky, like a bad person who is deserting her or something. Like a person who was never enough, or who was fraudulent and wanted to hurt or destroy her all along, and that is why all these bad things happened to all of us. It's like a deepening spiral of self condemnation where one untrue possible thing cascades into a thousand untrue things that look pretty true, all at once because I can't even see straight. FOG, right? So we capitulate. We choose loving them enough to love them into how we believe it could be, for all of us. But they exclude, my mother and my sister. And that is not what the picture is supposed to look or feel like. I mean, it's one thing for everyone to be sort of floundering around trying to put things back together. That is what we are doing now, in the family D H and I created. And sometimes, that looks pretty good. And sometimes, it looks really crummy and like we are not going to make it. But I read somewhere: Real boats rock. So, I think that means we are being honest to the degree we are capable of, today. ** So, that is how I could know that whatever it was they (mom and my sister) were doing, it was not creating that family I still, some stupid somehow, believe could happen for all of us. But it will never happen this way they are doing it, no matter how many pictures there are, and no matter the words they use to describe what they are doing, what they are sacrificing to do, for all of our sakes. My sister also exploded over how much it has cost her, and how I was not there when I should have been, and how I have never been there and etc. And she said her marriage was falling apart and whatever else she said. And I felt pretty guilty there too, because [I]she used to be able to call me, and to tell me how she saw what was happening between she and her husband, and I would respond to the pain in her.[/I]) And would invariably validate her point of view and tell her she was good and how to maybe see things differently and etc. And D H would always get so mad at me about that, because my sister would call, or not call for months, any time day or night and I would feel as driven to be there for her as I would be, for one of my own kids or grands. And I never could see why he would be upset with me because, and this is just what I would say to him: That is my sister. And I remember your having posted that your sister did this to you too, SWOT. But I suspect it, now. All those things she said in that phone call; all those words she chose. Because here is the thing: Though I was on pins and needles about when she would call, or whether she would call or just show up at the door or whether none of this would happen...she did know. And of course she had prepared herself in advance for how she would respond, whatever my response to her was. And I just got that right this minute. It was a manipulation. All of it. The whole thing. What she really wanted from me had nothing to do with family unity. She does not want my mother to have that man there again this summer. She said something about that in her phone call, too. I think she may have started the call with that and that is when I said whatever I said that caused the first explosion. I see that. D H helped me with that part. And about those pictures I still have of my mother and my sister, separately or together (thank you Copa) for this important piece. I could see those things D H has been trying to tell me were true things, and that the way I was seeing my FOO was not a true thing, through your postings about the pictures you keep of your mother. Those pictures weaken us because they seem to be proof that we are thinking ~ well, not to sound stupid here, but sometimes the voice changes to a younger time when we are working through something hurtful. When we are touching, again and again, a place where we were hurt that this thing, these pictures, represent in the real world of here and now. And what those pictures represented for me, and maybe they do for you too Copa, is that as my mom and my sister seemed to be doing this thing, seemed to be making loving family, the wrong person, the person who was not and never had been and never could be enough, was me. So maybe my mother (and my sister?) had been right about me, all along. So maybe, every time we see those pictures, we condemn ourselves, one more time and forever, over and over again, for not being the person who was enough to have brought our mothers to love us the way they did when they were beautiful when we were little. And we did not know then that they were happy because they were going out somewhere, and that it never had a thing to do with us, at all. We never did get to be enough, even in those moments we have clung to, all our adult lives. I think that could be true. I mean, I'm fuzzy on the edges of it, but I think that could be true. SWOT posted to us that she had destroyed pictures of herself as a child. Oh, SWOT. I wish you could have those pictures of that beautiful little girl you must surely have been back. You could love her so much, now. *** Because the true thing here is that there were so many, many times when our mothers were neither beautiful, nor happy, to see us. Here is another therapy piece coming up pretty often lately. Might as well have at it, now. *** So, I was like, eight. I was sick. I stayed home from school. I was sick enough that I stayed in bed all day. There was a repainted white dresser beside the bed and for some reason, I ran my thumb along the edges of a place where the paint was peeling, and peeled off more paint. More strips of white paint. And when my mother got home that day and came to check on me (we had a babysitter during the day) and she saw what I had done, she made me eat the strips of paint on the floor beside the dresser. And there was hair and dust in them. And I was sick. And she was so mad. And it makes me feel weak, to remember her, so big and so mad and coming right for me, just lying there in my bed like a sick person instead of being ~ instead of forgetting to be afraid of my mother. Instead of forgetting that. This attaches to a time when she burst into my bedroom (I was either six or maybe,seven) and ~ boom ~ strangled me. I can still feel the bed behind the backs of my knees and crashing down. And I feel the giving up, the not being able to draw breath and not even caring any more, about that. A therapist asked me once why I thought she stopped. I said probably because she knew she would be caught. Someone would know. I was six, then. Or I was seven. So that is a pretty little person to be, to have someone so big strangle you like that. And yet, all along, I knew, the whole time, that other people thought I was this really pretty little girl. So, you see the core of that conflict we are dealing with now, as we age and we are no longer seeing that finer reality reflected ~ we are no longer being validated in the same way, in the outer world as we were when we were little girls, or when we were beautiful young women ~ which every young woman is. And if we are attracting attention in that way, or if someone insists that we are, like my mother did that day at WalMart, then all we have left, since we know we are no longer legitimately, perfectly beautiful in the way we were when we were young women, then all we have left is what our mothers taught us was true. Strangled. White paint strips. Crying brother. Helplessness; cowardice. So utterly an admission of powerlessness. I am afraid, so afraid, too. Sorry for the ugly in these stories. Thank you so much for providing a safe place for me to be that ugly little girl, that ugly/not ugly/only how I look matters young girl or young woman. Ours is an ugly story. But at least now, we know what it is. And we know who wrote it. I see you. [I]I see you, mom. I see you back.[/I] Not to be too big a weirdo here, but I am bringing in Maya and the lady from Matrix and Lisa to see you, too. *** Maybe that is why I have picked the eyes of two black ladies to see these things through. Because they have been through similar things themselves, and have come through it. And because of their race, they have lived that kind of global condemnation that has nothing to do with what you did, and everything to do with what was already believed about you before you were ever even born. And you just sort of stumble over it one day, that they hate you for something you cannot help being. And who you are, who you might be or might have been, has nothing to do with it because according to your own freaking mother, you are only that thing that they see, and nothing more. But Maya is more. So, there you go, then. And Lisa was chosen as witness because of the English concept of fair play. It would not matter to her that I was as I was. It would be the principle of the thing. That is how the Lisa witness would know, without question, that what my mother did to me, and to all of us, was wrong. So, those were pretty good witnesses to choose. Lisa's take on everything I show her, or ask her opinion on: "Unacceptable." Just that. Not even any emotion. Just utter surprise at the wrongness of these things. "Unacceptable." And that has been working really well for me, in conjunction with the Maya witness and the black lady from Matrix witness. On we go. *** Thank heaven this site is anonymous. I swear, there are people who know me? Who think I am perfectly, rationally, totally sane. And I am, because I can go there or not. That is the difference. Locus of control. Maybe that is why all these traumatic things have gone unexamined until we had what we needed to undo them. Because we may not have come out of it sane, otherwise. So, we did good, then. Here we all are, upright and accounted for. 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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