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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: 658600" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>This is true and very kind, SWOT. I love that you see it this way.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>It's a strange thing, how it is that the lie sticks with us, that feels true, even in the face of the evidence of our lives. </p><p></p><p>I love the phrase "easily broken heart of gold."</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>At the end, what is being sought as we create the tapestry of dysfunctional family, or maybe, of any family, is resolution and absolution. For us, those things could only be achieved through creating family, because that is where the essential wounding occurred; those are the truths or the lies we need confirmed. This is, from where I am seeing from this morning, the reason that family imagery, that dinner with candles and snowy white linen, resonates so strongly with me. I would cleanse myself in changing what was, and redeem myself in my own and in my mother's eyes by creating (resolution) and then, welcoming her into (absolution), the family she could not or did not or chose not, to create for herself because of her confusion regarding what worth her own children, having come of her body and blood, could possibly have. </p><p></p><p>In hating her children, her husband, her friends, in denigrating all things having to do with herself, my mother chose and confirmed her own value <em>to herself</em>. How does that old saying go? Anybody who would love me is not worth loving? Whatever her woundings are, self-hatred was and is, the core. That is the confusion we experience in our interactions with our mother, today. That, I believe, is why she cannot accept the adults her children have created of themselves. There is an essential disconnect that comes about as relationship is repaired. The adults who do not seem, initially, to be the hated reflection of a hated self, turn out to be those same hated, despicable children, who, because she did love them, awakened harrowing conflicts regarding self worth and self hatred. That is why my mother can value a daughter's appearance while treating her as a whore. </p><p></p><p>We are her children, things come of her body and her blood. That we may be attractive or accomplished can never change that essential, true thing.</p><p></p><p>That is the secret toxicity affecting all of us today. Because we are her children, we remain hated and reviled extensions of her own hatred of self. Our families, those families we create or the things any of us achieve, cannot be valid truths, to her. That is why she can only love one grand. The truth is that she is bad, and so everything having to do with her is bound to be bad. It could be that one child could have been born who was not bad. The others would then take on even the badness of that child. (The golden child concept SWOT taught us about.) Unless my mother can find steady, unshakable reflection of acceptance and cherishment, she will not heal.</p><p></p><p>This is where the man who insists he will marry her comes in.</p><p></p><p>He is a widowed Greek Orthodox priest.</p><p></p><p>He could do it.</p><p></p><p>But that is what my sister is trying to provide: resolution, absolution.</p><p></p><p>So she hates him with a rabid intensity that knows no bounds, because her own absolution rides on salvation for the mother. As she does this very good thing however, she has begun seeing through the mother's jaundiced eyes.</p><p></p><p>She may always have seen through the mother's eyes. When she was herself excluded, creation of family acceptance, of that non-exclusion pact I am always posting about <em>and which she now denies knowing anything about</em>, meant she too would find a place at the table.</p><p></p><p>I was the one creating family at that time.</p><p></p><p>That was my value.</p><p></p><p>My family, the picture perfect family D H and I had created, fell apart.</p><p></p><p>My sister found and married the man who is now her husband <em>in a fundamental religious way that prohibits divorce.</em> This is key. This sister has seen two marriages turn nasty. Now, with this man locked into the marriage she needs to make that dinner I am always posting about for herself, she will create the family she needs to accomplish resolution. She will have the mother there: absolution. I am no longer trustworthy mother substitute, willing to abide by the pact on non-exclusion, where she will find a place at the table because, with the falling apart of the family D H and I created, the table no longer exists, for any of us.</p><p></p><p>Once she had access to the mother, she no longer needs a place at someone else's table. With the mother as ally, the table she creates need not include the other sibs <em>whom she has been taught to despise, along with herself.</em> In distancing herself from the other sibs, she may be preventing her identification with them in the mother's eyes.</p><p></p><p>So that's what I see this morning.</p><p></p><p>And there is compassion, for all of us. A wheel of hatred, turning and turning, devouring us all <em>whatever our intention. </em>And as it seems always to be in abusive relationship, though there are victims and villains and heroes and losers and winners, there is nothing personal going on. </p><p></p><p>The pieces are interchangeable.</p><p></p><p>The wheel turns.</p><p></p><p>My mission, should I choose to accept it (as they say on that television program Mission: Impossible) is to do nothing. I have, as have each of the sibs in my FOO, created resolution in creating the families we each have created. We have not repeated the mother's essential error of hating ourselves through despising our children. That is the thing I was looking for, the place that I may have harmed my own children, in every therapeutic session I have been part of. It must be there to some degree. That is why the betrayal I felt at my daughter's desertion of her own children hit something cold in me. I chose to believe the psychiatric diagnoses because without them, I would not have been able to hold faith with my child <em>whose unspoken task it is to validate the resolution I found in creating family. </em>In a way then, the primary task of each of my children was my own absolution in breaking the chain of self and other hatred. That may be why detachment theory was so impossibly hard for me. When I finally stood up, I was confronting every demon, every true thing I knew about how family should <em>not</em> be.</p><p></p><p>So, I did good, then. I loved them enough to try.</p><p></p><p>That is why everything had to be perfect. I could not vary from the path that would see us all safe. My children broke that all apart, and now we are very real, and very human.</p><p></p><p>A triumph of love, after all.</p><p></p><p>Acceptance. Value found in the individual whether everything looks perfect, whether we look like the family I was determined to create, or not.</p><p></p><p>And again, the perfect response to all of it, to the impossible situations we find ourselves in, is not to take it seriously. We are who we are, and there are ways to declare that, however seriously the English king presents himself. Pompously offering to allow us to join in a quest for a thing we already have if we quarter he and his army for the night is the invitation to the dysfunctional family's interpretation of what matters. It need not matter, to us. </p><p></p><p>"What are you doing here?"</p><p></p><p>"None of your business!"</p><p></p><p>(That is from Lil and Jabber's Monty Python clip.)</p><p></p><p>We don't understand the nature of the king's quest. We do not accede to his legitimacy in the same way he does and expects us to. That is the thing I found in the Monty Python piece posted on Lil's pirate thread. And in Jabber's link to the Scotsman is the way family actually <em>is.</em> Everyone pretty messed up, but exuberantly being who they are and doing what they do to proclaim, and to lay claim to, what is.</p><p></p><p><em>Even when, though they are dressed to wear kilts, they have forgotten to put them on and parade away, celebrating who they would be if they had kilts.</em></p><p></p><p>We are all pretty messed up in that litter of puppies way D H family is, too.</p><p></p><p>And that is okay.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 658600, member: 17461"] This is true and very kind, SWOT. I love that you see it this way. It's a strange thing, how it is that the lie sticks with us, that feels true, even in the face of the evidence of our lives. I love the phrase "easily broken heart of gold." At the end, what is being sought as we create the tapestry of dysfunctional family, or maybe, of any family, is resolution and absolution. For us, those things could only be achieved through creating family, because that is where the essential wounding occurred; those are the truths or the lies we need confirmed. This is, from where I am seeing from this morning, the reason that family imagery, that dinner with candles and snowy white linen, resonates so strongly with me. I would cleanse myself in changing what was, and redeem myself in my own and in my mother's eyes by creating (resolution) and then, welcoming her into (absolution), the family she could not or did not or chose not, to create for herself because of her confusion regarding what worth her own children, having come of her body and blood, could possibly have. In hating her children, her husband, her friends, in denigrating all things having to do with herself, my mother chose and confirmed her own value [I]to herself[/I]. How does that old saying go? Anybody who would love me is not worth loving? Whatever her woundings are, self-hatred was and is, the core. That is the confusion we experience in our interactions with our mother, today. That, I believe, is why she cannot accept the adults her children have created of themselves. There is an essential disconnect that comes about as relationship is repaired. The adults who do not seem, initially, to be the hated reflection of a hated self, turn out to be those same hated, despicable children, who, because she did love them, awakened harrowing conflicts regarding self worth and self hatred. That is why my mother can value a daughter's appearance while treating her as a whore. We are her children, things come of her body and her blood. That we may be attractive or accomplished can never change that essential, true thing. That is the secret toxicity affecting all of us today. Because we are her children, we remain hated and reviled extensions of her own hatred of self. Our families, those families we create or the things any of us achieve, cannot be valid truths, to her. That is why she can only love one grand. The truth is that she is bad, and so everything having to do with her is bound to be bad. It could be that one child could have been born who was not bad. The others would then take on even the badness of that child. (The golden child concept SWOT taught us about.) Unless my mother can find steady, unshakable reflection of acceptance and cherishment, she will not heal. This is where the man who insists he will marry her comes in. He is a widowed Greek Orthodox priest. He could do it. But that is what my sister is trying to provide: resolution, absolution. So she hates him with a rabid intensity that knows no bounds, because her own absolution rides on salvation for the mother. As she does this very good thing however, she has begun seeing through the mother's jaundiced eyes. She may always have seen through the mother's eyes. When she was herself excluded, creation of family acceptance, of that non-exclusion pact I am always posting about [I]and which she now denies knowing anything about[/I], meant she too would find a place at the table. I was the one creating family at that time. That was my value. My family, the picture perfect family D H and I had created, fell apart. My sister found and married the man who is now her husband [I]in a fundamental religious way that prohibits divorce.[/I] This is key. This sister has seen two marriages turn nasty. Now, with this man locked into the marriage she needs to make that dinner I am always posting about for herself, she will create the family she needs to accomplish resolution. She will have the mother there: absolution. I am no longer trustworthy mother substitute, willing to abide by the pact on non-exclusion, where she will find a place at the table because, with the falling apart of the family D H and I created, the table no longer exists, for any of us. Once she had access to the mother, she no longer needs a place at someone else's table. With the mother as ally, the table she creates need not include the other sibs [I]whom she has been taught to despise, along with herself.[/I] In distancing herself from the other sibs, she may be preventing her identification with them in the mother's eyes. So that's what I see this morning. And there is compassion, for all of us. A wheel of hatred, turning and turning, devouring us all [I]whatever our intention. [/I]And as it seems always to be in abusive relationship, though there are victims and villains and heroes and losers and winners, there is nothing personal going on. The pieces are interchangeable. The wheel turns. My mission, should I choose to accept it (as they say on that television program Mission: Impossible) is to do nothing. I have, as have each of the sibs in my FOO, created resolution in creating the families we each have created. We have not repeated the mother's essential error of hating ourselves through despising our children. That is the thing I was looking for, the place that I may have harmed my own children, in every therapeutic session I have been part of. It must be there to some degree. That is why the betrayal I felt at my daughter's desertion of her own children hit something cold in me. I chose to believe the psychiatric diagnoses because without them, I would not have been able to hold faith with my child [I]whose unspoken task it is to validate the resolution I found in creating family. [/I]In a way then, the primary task of each of my children was my own absolution in breaking the chain of self and other hatred. That may be why detachment theory was so impossibly hard for me. When I finally stood up, I was confronting every demon, every true thing I knew about how family should [I]not[/I] be. So, I did good, then. I loved them enough to try. That is why everything had to be perfect. I could not vary from the path that would see us all safe. My children broke that all apart, and now we are very real, and very human. A triumph of love, after all. Acceptance. Value found in the individual whether everything looks perfect, whether we look like the family I was determined to create, or not. And again, the perfect response to all of it, to the impossible situations we find ourselves in, is not to take it seriously. We are who we are, and there are ways to declare that, however seriously the English king presents himself. Pompously offering to allow us to join in a quest for a thing we already have if we quarter he and his army for the night is the invitation to the dysfunctional family's interpretation of what matters. It need not matter, to us. "What are you doing here?" "None of your business!" (That is from Lil and Jabber's Monty Python clip.) We don't understand the nature of the king's quest. We do not accede to his legitimacy in the same way he does and expects us to. That is the thing I found in the Monty Python piece posted on Lil's pirate thread. And in Jabber's link to the Scotsman is the way family actually [I]is.[/I] Everyone pretty messed up, but exuberantly being who they are and doing what they do to proclaim, and to lay claim to, what is. [I]Even when, though they are dressed to wear kilts, they have forgotten to put them on and parade away, celebrating who they would be if they had kilts.[/I] We are all pretty messed up in that litter of puppies way D H family is, too. And that is okay. Cedar [/QUOTE]
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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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