In a totally new place and need perspective? Cedar? Anyone?

[Scent of Cedar *]

Cedar, did you come to think you had the same flaw that your mother had?

Yes.

Man, those were miserable years.

Thank you Copa, for putting those pieces together regarding the global responsibility the abused child grows into adulthood with and the certainty that I was responsible for having done some horrible thing and then, repressed it.

That was the core of the thing.

Think of the time wasted in guilt and shame and fear when what I needed, and what my kids needed from me, was for me to stay steady state and just love them and assure them we were all going to be fine.

At least I see it, now.

My head is spinning.

I told D H about this revelation. He was like, "Well, of course."

How could I have gone through all these years, and all that therapy, without having put those two pieces together?

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I wouldn't waste them on wine though. They make the best pancake syrup EVER.

I will try that.

It would make a beautiful, deeply colored syrup. What a great thing to send in the mail.

Or, to bring South for the neighbors.

:O)

Thanks, ICN.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

that made her do what she did instead of loving me, that thing, that wrong, hated, left behind thing I was so sure no longer applied...had reached out and failed my child, and then, my children. Terminal. Some terminal defect in me that caused me to fail them. That had led me to miss some crucial something every other mom knows.

This is so tragic for us.

With the knowledge now that the response was within us to say: We will get through this. I don't know how. But I know we will.

Faith. Trust. Hope. The most important things, we did not have then. But have the beginnings of, Now.

"Well, I guess you weren't such a good mother after all, were you."

Where was empathy? Where was her pain for you? As your mother.

Or was it there, Cedar? And did she feel such responsibility and guilt that she had to deflect it immediately to you?

I fail. I lose. My child suffers.

My child suffers! Because of that thing! A desperate quest begins, whose end is not visible until this very day.

Yes.

Damaged, not defective. I am damaged. Not defective. That makes all the difference in the world to our abilities to merit recovery.

Yes.

Because that is very true: Responsibility is our right, our adult right. Good things happen and bad things happen and no one, no one in all the world, knows which it will be. We are not exempt.

There is such tragedy here. Because this is where freedom lies.

If you cannot bear to risk, to fail, there is no freedom. Just dependency. And victimization.

No one knows the courage it takes for us to take responsibility for an outcome we are not sure of.

True.

What do you want him to answer?

I think I would tell him: I realize all of the answers are in me.

If I had the courage, but I do not, I would say, what gives you the confidence and security that you know answers for others? But I will not.

I would tell him that my old doctor continued to practice until the day he died. Without a medical license. I would tell him that I suspect that confidence and that entitlement is inbred in him, also. (It is so strange right now that I am having the tendency to speak in Spanish.) And how could I ever really think of trusting a profession whose default is authority and belief in their absolute right and entitlement and word.

Thank you Copa, for putting those pieces together regarding the global responsibility the abused child grows into adulthood with and the certainty that I was responsible for having done some horrible thing and then, repressed it.

Cedar, I have not read in depth your posts of this morning, but want to say something here.

I think this secret fear underlies a lot of the defensiveness and later, intransigence of parents vis a vis their difficult children. We dig in. I am not blaming the parents here. I am saying that so many of us react with the certainty that you describe. The belief that somebody is guilty and it is not me. The hot potato. Guilt. Responsibility.

And that makes it worse with our kids. Because they need us to love them and be their parents. Even though we need to protect ourselves....to enter into purely defensive relationships with them...may be a stance that triggers child-like emotions....instead of parental ones.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Or was it there, Cedar? And did she feel such responsibility and guilt that she had to deflect it immediately to you?

No. She enjoyed it, Copa. You know that thick, rich chuckle kind of voice? Dripping with contempt?

Yeah.

"WITCH, PLEASE."

That's what I should have said. Because when people abuse us, they really are telling us they want our red slippers, our magic shoes that can take us home to ourselves with our hearts and our courage and intelligences intact.

"WITCH, PLEASE."

But here is the thing. Had I not been raised to have only core toxic shame at the heart of me, I would not have been vulnerable to her words.

They would have been patently stupid, from an intellectual point of considering what was communicated.

Who is the fool, here.

Our mothers (and sisters) [my mother, for sure] know they are setting off atomic bombs of toxic shame. I swear, they do it on purpose and with malicious intent.

We don't get the why of that, we don't even understand they meant it, because we are not so much in the business of setting anybody up.

That is their business.

Setting people up to be used, whether for money or the pleasure of the game.

That is who our very own relatives are.



I feel so badly for us. Poor little things. When I uncover something especially toxic, I envision my adult self coming to talk to me. I am always like, ashamed of myself before who I am as a grown up. It's an interesting and valuable exercise, learning to love ourselves as the frightened, bereft children we were.

We were all alone, and so frightened.

The wonder of it is that we made it through this at all.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

"Well, I guess you weren't such a good mother after all, were you."

You know that thick, rich chuckle kind of voice? Dripping with contempt?

Like she was gunning for you to fail, all along. With your own children. Her grandchildren.

How is this forgivable, Cedar?

The only thing I can remember comparable was this:

It was right after I adopted my son. It was the first time I had seen my mother in many years (I decided to have contact when I became a mother.) My Mom was staying at a fancy old hotel.

We were in her room. I do not remember why, but I was standing. And the topic came up of the estrangement between us of the past years. And my son (then 2 or so) must have captured the tension in my voice so he became anxious and ran out of the room down the long hall.

So I ran after him, and in doing so, I fell down. And my mother started blaming my son.

(It is good I am remembering this. Because I did have a voice with her if it was about my child.)

So, I told her, "Stop blaming him. It is not his fault."

She responded: "It his his fault. He did cause it."

And here we have a demonstration of how I must have been scapegoated for everything that she felt, that happened to her in her life.

And if I were to answer her now from my adult voice I would say: Mama I always loved you. I understand you feel bad. But it is wrong to blame me or my child for your bad feelings. Nobody is responsible. Except you.

 

[Copabanana]

Let me win. If I cannot win, let me be brave."

Is it a form of cowardice to allow someone else to define the parameters of relationship?

No. It is their right to decide for themselves. Not for you.

It is cowardice to let others define our relationship for us, without having a voice. This is what I allowed for years and years with my sister.

There are times, of course, when others try to prohibit us from having overtly a voice. Children. Kidnapping. Prisoner of war. But I think even then we do, in covert ways, unless we are so terrorized that we identify with our captors, and do harm to ourselves. As we did.

 

[Copabanana]

D H said: What your brother has done is worse. He threw you over knowing you had gone to battle for him. He is a man. You are his sister.

What he did to you is more wrong than what your sister does.

When I got the attorney and in the name of myself and my sister sued my mother for our inheritance that she had robbed, and secured a substantial settlement for my sister. Guess what? She was mad at me.

The thing is they hate us for our strength. They do not love us for our love and responsibility. They hate us. Because they hate themselves. And when they see us, they only see their own imperfections.

I do not know what triggers self-analysis and taking responsibility for who one is. I really do not know if it is characterological or choice. Or accident. By that I mean, like you and D H. How in the world could you have had at 21 years old the good sense and intuition to mate with a man of his potential for character and steadfastness and wisdom? That had to have been divine.

 

[Copabanana]

But we will not feel ... like dead, guilty things, when the bad things come, as they do to us all.

Like me when my Mother was as she died.

After living our lives as we have? That will feel like life, rich and full and gloriously colorful.

We will love, and we will live from, our full hearts.

When M comes home and we first meet each other's eyes, his is the sweetest most innocent and beautiful smile. Really a window to his soul. And I feel so privileged that somebody, that he particularly, feels what he feels to smile that way just to me.

Really I do not believe that that openness existed between us even a few weeks ago. I think I am changing.

Had your psychiatrist lived the childhood you lived, he would be Basket Case Boy. This is true. We have been traumatized by our own mothers.

Yes. But the thing is no matter how much they would deny it, they judge us. In their words they evaluate, they assess, they observe. But it is a top down appraisal. They fear what our real experience is and was. Because they are about dominating and controlling. But will never allow themselves to see.

I know this sounds strong. And I am questioning it as I write. But I will not back down.

We really have been outrageously courageous. Just to drive a car, for us.

Well, except, I do not. Except in Cities and within towns. So I am pretty much confined to my own.

And then, my children...we lost all of that. We were sad and worried sick and afraid and enraged and powerless to change any of it.

But look at this, Cedar. Your children are coming around. They are working everything through. No life is without challenges.

Your dear daughter is exactly the person she wants to be--at essence. Isn't that the truth? She might want less of this and more of that, but her core is respect for herself.

And your son, is the same.

Might you have to revise your thinking about the children?

And my mom would say things like: "I remember leaving your house and you would all be out there waving and we would think, what a nice family. You just never know what goes on behind closed doors."

What a dreadfully horrible mindset. She was wishing that you were a secret victim? Your own mother?

Stuff about what D H might have done, and had I thought about that.

I mean why would she go there? Wishing secret harm and abuse or shame or whatever? Does this woman not have an internal sensor?

She seems so thrilled with her every idea...and so convinced of her superiority...Where did this person come from?

He said I was too permissive a mom; that I was forever doing things for the kids they should have been doing for themselves.

That is what M says about me and my son. So is this a crime?

And he came away with things we both could have done differently, but nothing horrible enough to have created what was happening to all of us.

Your daughter is a highly creative and powerful person. One in 50,000 I think. I wanted to put 500,000 but thought you would not believe me.

Maybe this is what a young girl with voice, with intensity, with courage with heart and power and a highly unique and creative mind...does when they are 15 and it is 1987 or whenever it was. Maybe for her...it was normal.

I mean think punk. Think street theater. I have run out of thinks....right now but will find some more.

Maybe your son was not cut out for a grey flannel suit. Maybe he too has some of the same characteristics as his sister. And he needed to go his own way.

Maybe what looked like trouble or weakness was strength. At least to a point.

There was surely something happening, but it was a waste of time to believe it was something we had done if we could find nothing to justify what was happening. Even if there was something, he said, the correct action was to concentrate on addressing what was happening, now.

Yes. And you did. But it broke you down.

Copa, that is what we did with those bad therapists, too.

We took responsibility.

We believe we were wrong. Intellectually we understand. But in the heart of us, no matter what the "crime" is, we are guilty.

Yes.

How sad. All those years gone. And now I have Emphysema. And I only smoked 6 years. I quit smoking almost 40 years ago. So, it is too late. In so many ways. Violins here.

 

[BusynMember]

I'm sorry she did that, Serenity. We have traced the ways our moms and our families of origin seem to practice a kind of hierarchy of importance, or outright exclusion ~ even reaching out to exclude and prevent the family healing after their deaths. Do you think your mom did that because you and your sister were becoming close?

Well, when you wait fifteen years why do you suddenly do it? I think so, yes, Otherwise, she would have told her right away, but you know what? At that time I told her, she didn't care, Didn't react, Wasn't concerned about my sister at all, Just wanted to go off to her boyfriends house and not pay any money for sister's medical bills,

Yes is a complete sentence,

 

[BusynMember]

Because they hate themselves. And when they see us, they only see their own imperfections.

Again, yes is a complete sentence,

 

[Copabanana]

When I finally had a chance to ask her why it was such a secret from me, s he said something like, "Well, I know how high strung you are and I didn't want you to worry,,,

Blame the victim.

You gave her an opportunity to change. Right there. She chose to reject it. And continue along the same destructive road.

 

[Copabanana]

Think of the time wasted in guilt and shame and fear when what I needed, and what my kids needed from me, was for me to stay steady state and just love them and assure them we were all going to be fine.

Cedar, I am not so sure that you did abandon your children emotionally.

I believe, yes, that you might have gone a little bit nuts, like I did. But the thing is, your kids were already teens to late teens.

They knew you. They knew you loved them. They always knew.

Our kids know exactly who we are. They love us. They do not give up on us. They know who we are. Even nuts.

Maybe this is the path your kids took to be who they are. My son too.

And we could not have faith because our defaults have been to be afraid. And to fear the worst.

But maybe our kids knew all of the time that although we had gone off of the deep end, we were still who we always had been.

And that is why your children trust you no matter what. And they always did. There is true love there. And they always knew.

It was you who forgot. And me too.

Our kids might have used our temporary insanity to accuse us, to manipulate us, to extract whatever they wanted...but they never doubted the core of us. Because they had not had childhoods like we did. They had us.

So, I am saying this:

One, the kids were just growing up.
Two, We lost faith in ourselves. And feared we had damaged them.
Three, they went on their merry way, and used our distress and complete confusion to their own advantage.
Four, they never forgot we loved them. They always had this at the heart of them.
Five, they grew up to be who they were. Independent, strong people of integrity, kindness and goodwill. *My son is still a work in progress.
Six, the more strong, centered and confident we become, less defensive, reactive and fearful...i.e less "out to lunch" (that is a new diagnostic term) our kids will be more likely to show us and share their evolving selves and lives.

Cedar, I think you are still taking on too much blame and responsibility for what happened with your children.

 

[Copabanana]

We lost faith in ourselves. And feared we had damaged them.

In my case, I feared that the reality of my childhood had come true. And confirmed again that I deserved nothing. Nothing at all in life. And everything was my fault and my responsibility. And that is why I deserved nothing at all.

 

[BusynMember]

You gave her an opportunity to change. Right there. She chose to reject it. And continue along the same destructive road.

Thank you, Copa, I used to wonder if I'd tried hard enough, Like you do, But I had apologized so often it probably sounded boring, I took the blame to the extent that I know I wrote on a card to her that I know it was 100% my fault and I'm sorry, I didn't even really believe this, but if it would make things ok or even better, I was willing to say what I thought she needed to hear because it was NEVER her fault to her, So in a way, it was the truth, Her truth, at least, I really can't think of any stone I'd left unturned, I offered to v isit her, She said, "Don't you dare bring your husband," Because he had called her once for me to tell her not to call Bart and bother him anymore, HOW DARE HE! But I still offered to visit myself, but she as so cold to it, I know that nothing would work, At that time, I know I started really, really detaching, Since I'd already been detaching, not anticipating any favorable outcome, it was not that hard, When she slapped me from the grave, I didn't care much until years later, often when my sister would slam the phone in my ear, My mother/my sister, Perhaps I saw and see them as one, They are a lot alike, My mother was physically like me and forgetful like me and nervous like me and certainly I knew from the Queen how to twist a knife, But my sister was the master,

Now I see why I was so upset each time my sister predictably got upset over things I did that I did not mean to be malicious,,,,and twisted them into malicious intent,. I saw my mother in her,

"You only adopted those kids for the money,"

"You're selfish,"

"You're a taker, not a giver," (Soooooooooo untrue, but she thought so)


I wanted to post my thoughts, Thank you, Copa, Hi, Cedar Good morning to both, The period on my keyboard is stuck so until I get my lazy buttocks up and buy one, I hope you can still understand my posts,

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

In my case, I feared that the reality of my childhood had come true. And confirmed again that I deserved nothing. Nothing at all in life. And everything was my fault and my responsibility. And that is why I deserved nothing at all.

"The reality of childhood...."

How sad for us all, Copa.

We need to stop being afraid. We need to track these feelings to their sources, understanding them for what they are: the living heart of the trauma we were left with; the living core of the traumatized child.

They had no right to do that to us.

We are more than brave enough to reclaim ourselves, and we will do it without hatred. That has been the things holding us back. The very quality in us that prevented hatred is the thing preventing our healing, now.

So, we will not hate them, then.

That is why I could not turn away from them. Not because I love them, but because I refuse to hate them.

That is the mechanism of denial in this matter of abusive family of origin.

The choice not to hate.

Our mothers were weirdly, inhumanly structured, to have been able to harm us the way they did; our sisters are the same.

The nastiness in your sisters I can see; I see the hurt in them, and the cruelty. They are so like my sister, who is so like my mother.

Both can be safely disregarded.

Without respect, there is no trust. Without trust, there is no love.

I do not trust my mother: therefore I cannot love her. What I feel for her, whatever it is, is not love. Now that I am no longer protecting myself from who my sister really is, I do not trust my sister, either. I trust her to be who she is: not a trustworthy person; not someone I respect. It turns out she isn't like me, at all. That has always been the problem. Her, and the way that she is. My mother, and the way that she is.

And I just kept making myself do the right things. Have them to dinner. Call them on the phone. See them when they asked me to.

There must be respect before there can be trust; there must be trust before there can be love. I don't know what to name what it is I feel for my actual mother, for my actual sister (and not for the sanitized, G rated versions of each of them I believe I love), but it is not love. It is not respect.

I saw a beautiful picture this morning on FB of Dr Ben Carson. His is such a beautiful, beautiful face. Like the face of a saint. I saw a picture of Jimmy Carter. There it was again, those same beautiful eyes, though the eyes of the one are brown and of the other, blue.

Those are not the eyes of my mother or of my sister.

Their eyes are scary eyes; are erect defenses eyes.

How could I not have seen this.

***

What we (I) have been writing about for the past weeks is that weird, circling feeling of trying to balance polar opposites. I am (we are?) trying to do the right thing by loving mothers (in my case) and sisters (in each of our cases) who are very bad people.

There must be respect, before there can be trust. There must be trust, before there can be love.

Those statement are true.

Think about them, really think through them. I am not saying respect in all facets. I am saying we trust to the degree we respect, and we love to the degree that we trust.

It cannot be any other way.

I don't respect so many things my mother has done. How could I? There are things to like about my mom. I do believe she loves me, but for her, love and rage and dominance go together. The truth is that I fear her to this day and I am correct in doing so.

That is the crux of it for us. It isn't, I don't think, so much that we have to go back and figure out how to love our mothers. We have to go back, acknowledging what our mothers did, who our mothers are, and save that little girl inside us who was so hurt. We can only do that armed with the truth. That is the problem. We feel all jerky to believe we don't love our moms.

That is why I want that family dinner.

Moms who come to dinner (or sisters who bring their new husbands to luncheon) love us and are loved by us.

That's what we keep believing in: love.

They do not believe in love.

They do not search out where they respect us, where they trust us, where they love us, and believe they have made a beginning and we all can be saved.

They believe in hate, and in hating. Jealousy is justifying a hatred that already exists.

Just like the Native American saying that there are two wolves in each of us. One wolf is hatred. The other is love. The one we feed is the stronger wolf, for us.

That is why we are determined not to live for vengeance; not to see through those eyes.

Which are the eyes of our mothers?

Which are the eyes of our sisters?

Which eyes are our eyes.

***

Whether I can admit that to myself or not, though I feel one way about my mother, I am supposed to love her. I require this of myself. Because to do otherwise creates of me someone I am not; someone I refuse to be.

The same is true for the way I feel about my sister.

That is the nature of the conflict, here.

We need to see these people for who they are. We are adults. We don't need mother love ~ which is a good thing, because we did not have it when we did need it.

The conflict now is whether to believe them or ourselves, about who we are. Serenity is correct: We cannot see them, cannot think of them without brutal honesty in who we tell ourselves they are.

"The moment you feel like you have to prove your worth to someone is the moment to absolutely and utterly walk away."

I saw that on Facebook this morning.

That is the question destroying us where our mothers and our sisters are concerned.

We are required to prove our own worth.

We are sisters. We are daughters (or, sons). Gifts from the Universe to one another and look what they are doing with the gifts they were given!

We haven't done that with our gifts, with our Universal gifts. We have chosen the wolf that is love.

They chose the other.

No trust without respect; no love without trust. I don't know what it is I feel for my mom, or for my sister, but it cannot be love. I have to go so deep into denial to love them. I have to betray my own best interests to name what I feel for them love. Or protectiveness.

I have to betray myself to love them.

That is the core issue of self betrayal.

Mother. Sister.

We need to stop doing that.

Copa, I have picked new Mother imagery. It is Dr. Ben Carson. I just love the eyes. I feel nourished and supported and approved, in those eyes.

Meet my mom.

:O)

And now, meet each of us.

Note the eyes.

Note the wolves of choice.

Cedar

I don't know what it is I do feel for my mother, or for my sister. I fear my mother; fear the cut of her. I fear my sister.

That precludes love.

I hate what they've done to me, and to all of us. We need to see that, everyone reading here. We need to see what refusing to see the wolves they have chosen has done to us in our adult lives. Once we stop fooling around trying to convince ourselves we love these people, and that we don't fear them when of course we do, then the conflicted Child will heal.

It cannot be another way.

True things are true in all their parts. That is why we cannot heal, and that is the degree to which we cannot heal: Are we telling ourselves the truth about who these people are? Not who they are to us: mother; sister. They treat everyone the way they treat us. We need to stop telling ourselves these people are good for us. They are not. We need to stop berating ourselves because these people have hurt us.

That is what they do, how they feed, where they live.

We need to stop babying ourselves; we need to come out of denial.

Those beautiful eyes ~ Dr. Ben Carson; Jimmy Carter; the eyes of the Mary...those are our eyes. That is why we recognize ourselves in those eyes, in the eyes of the Mary, in Ben Carson's and in Jimmy Carter's. We are needed; we are required in this time, to stand up and look out of our own, beautiful eyes.

And then, maybe, we can help someone else.

"The moment you feel like you have to prove your worth to someone is the moment to absolutely and utterly walk away."

I also learned on FB this morning that we can clean wooden cabinets with a paste of 1 part vegetable oil and 2 parts baking soda.

Also, today is my Book Club. I am presenter, this time. The problem is that not all of us could find the book first selected. So, we are doing two books. One will be Cooked. The other is How We Got to Now, by Steven Johnson.

Believe it or not, I am one of the persons for whom that book has not arrived on time.

But I am presenting on that book too, tonight.

So, I will be watching and devising questions from, the PBS presentation of that very book. That will take three hours.

So, I cannot be online with all of us here so much, today.

But I will check in off and on, and I will be back tomorrow.

Cedar

The following material was written yesterday but I ran out of time and did not post it.

It is cowardice to let others define our relationship for us, without having a voice. This is what I allowed for years and years with my sister.

I have been thinking this afternoon in a new way about my mom and my sister. And it wasn't so much we didn't (I didn't) have a voice as it was that I never believed she was doing what it looked like she was doing. D H would say something about either one of them and I would say no, that wasn't true.

My mom: I knew she was mean. I knew to be guarded with her. But in times of vulnerability, we are not able to guard ourselves well. I had posted about the way they seemed to go for the throat once we were vulnerable because of the confusion and shame we felt over what was happening with our kids.

Here is the thing: I needed a mother to tell me, in a voice I could hear from a woman I could trust ~ my own mother ~ the very words and tones and concepts we have figured out today regarding how to see and be of some help to ourselves and our children, now.

I got "Well, looks like you weren't such a good mother after all, were you." instead. That is the thing we cannot communicate to one another even posting here: We were vulnerable when they said it and they knew it. And they said it anyway.

Who is the fool, here.

Who is the ugly, broken failure as a woman and as a mother, here. Even after her daughter is grown.

Copa, your mom had to know you were making yourself vulnerable to her, that you were bringing your child to her because, as a mother yourself, you wanted to share this with your mother as was your right, Copa. As was my right. To finally have a mother, a Universal Mother who strengthened and upheld and functioned from love.

She knew, Copa.

And saw it as a vulnerability in the same way my mother saw my need of a Universal Mother as a vulnerability.

Our mothers and our sisters know what they are doing to the smallest cut of the knife.

Cheating. That's what they were doing. Masquerading, hiding beneath the honorable cloak of the Universal Mother, knives at the ready.

Sharp, sharp knives, Copa and Serenity.

That is us; with our first babies, in our first pregnancies, awaiting our adopted child and the mother we would become.

That is how vulnerable to our mothers we were. And here is the thing. We believed in our mothers because we knew the mothers of our friends; we knew the myth of the Universal Mother and believed in our mothers.

And they used the vulnerability created by our choice to hold faith in them and destroyed us.

That is what they did.

And our sisters did the same, celebrating every smallest tragic thing with their sharp teeth and their wolves eyes.

Remember that poetry?

How scary it was, to me?

Call the taste of a dark wind, named
Vengeance

Twin wolves...

Twin wolves
livid red
in those eyes.

We are not those who choose hate.

We are fine.

Everything is going to be just fine.

We really are walking right out of this.

And just as they tell us was true, the power to do so has always been ours, all along.

All we ever needed to do was claim it.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

How sad. All those years gone. And now I have Emphysema. And I only smoked 6 years. I quit smoking almost 40 years ago. So, it is too late. In so many ways. Violins here.

Never too late, Copa. None of us knows what it is we are doing here in the first place. We are here. And, we are here on purpose. Or, we would be done here.

Copa...is this way you are seeing now a real thing, or is it something come of the horrible pain the Child within carries?

Remember that story? About how none of us knows what time it is? That woman spoke to me as she did, just another conversation for her as she prepared for the time coming so soon...but it changed everything for me, Copa.

And I remembered that snippet of our conversation, and I remembered and drew strength from it, and from her, for the rest of my life.

We really don't know what time it is in any sense; not just our mortality, but in any sense.

That is why we choose to do our best we know.

Because there is no reason not to.

I like that thinking I am thinking, this morning. I hope I remember that, the next time I am all wrapped up in something I don't understand.

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

I don't respect so many things my mother has done. How could I? There are things to like about my mom. I do believe she loves me, but for her, love and rage and dominance go together. The truth is that I fear her to this day and I am correct in doing so.

Sadly, I know what you mean. Actually, if I was not in my mother's space, I didn't fear her. She only demeaned me if I was talking to her or with her and she was harmless otherwise. She did her worst when she disinherited me, but that didn't harm me, as far as legally. It was just a typical her thing to do regarding me, but it didn't scare me.

My sister is the one I have to fear. She took it up a notch with the cops and, although obviously the cops never took her too seriously (you could see the boredom or even discomfort when they visited because I called her or e-mailed her), she has the ability within her to try to get me in serious trouble. And I choose not to be in that position ever again. If I'm not in touch with her, it won't happen. I have never done anything illegal or hurt anybody and nobody else is going to call the cops on me.

I don't know why I wasn't afraid earlier on. But, as I said before, I am soon to be 62. I want to enjoy t he rest of, what is turning out to be, a good life. I can not deal with those games anymore and I've lived enough drama for a lifetime with my FOO. I plan on smooth sailing from now on. You two also deserve this. We are at the time in our life when she have paid our dues and no longer need to be in charge of anybody but ourselves. Love them, yes. Be in charge of, no. Hang around them just because of a random DNA lottery? Not if we don't feel they are safe to us, emotionally or worse.

Not my circus, not my monkeys. I still love that one. Still have the actual shirt.

I'm done.

Sorry. Just a vent.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

If I had the courage, but I do not, I would say, what gives you the confidence and security that you know answers for others? But I will not.

I would not risk vulnerability with an authority figure who was not functioning as he promised me he would be able to do or why was he taking my money. I remember that first therapist. I see now the foolishness in the global condemnation of the languaging he used to defend himself from an attack I had not mounted. But I did not see it Copa, for something like twenty five years.

Twenty five years, Copa and Serenity, I carried the shame of that naming I did not understand. I could not see it because, though he named whatever he thought he was naming, what he named for me was the mother wound.

Was the core hurt of the mother wound.

He validated the hurt of the freaking mother wound he was taking my money on the promise that he could heal.

He hurt me with it, instead.

In that time when I needed to hear: I know you. I know you will be fine. I spoke in error. I was wrong to hurt you. Everything is going to be fine because you are beautiful and perfect and strong in the core of you. He could have added the blessing: Your daughter will be fine. I would have believed him. I believed everything he said, back in that time when I could no longer believe in myself ~ when I believed I may have hurt my own child.

When I was so afraid I would hurt my son too, in some way I could not see.

roar

He said what he said, instead.

I too asked for clarification, the last time I saw him. That took more courage than I had. I did it, anyway. I don't remember what he said. I was no longer vulnerable to him. I was as guarded with him as I have always been with my mother, with my sister. But I did ask him. I said, "You said I was a manipulator. What else can you tell me? What do I need to know?"

Whatever he said, I gave him a book, at that last meeting. It was Charles William's Descent Into Hell. I had tried to order one for him. They were out of print. I gave him mine.

Months later, that book I had tried to order was delivered. They had gone, some miraculous somehow, back into another printing.

So, I was not without that book, which is my favorite, or one of them, after all.

Bona fide miracle, right there.

This is what that lovely first therapist said, when I gave him that battered, underlined copy of that book I had referenced so many times through our therapy together: "I devour books."

Do you see the freaking power over.

Know what I said, in my secret heart but never aloud?

"Good. Devour this one."

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Sorry. Just a vent.

No. Not a vent, Serenity. A triumph.

I think I do not love my mom or my sister.

Probably that will come, in time.

I am still so surprised at who they are. I am not having those scary times of disbelief, now ~ like a ghost walked over a grave or something. I am not wondering anymore what kind of person thinks this way about her own family.

I meant it, when I said we are so fortunate to have survived them, at all.

I am coming to see through my own eyes, but that doesn't mean I am able to believe it all, just yet.

I feel really badly for us, for all of us, that those were our mothers; that those were our sisters.

We could have really, truly loved a mother. We could have truly loved a sister.

That is what I was thinking when I posted that Nietzche quote.

I said that about my own sister. That I believed her, but that I no longer believed in her.

Anyway, here is the quote I meant:

Here is another:

And this is where we will be, when we are healed and whole and fully ourselves, again.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Okay, so I just had to add this one, too.

I never did know how truly I appreciate Neitzche. Nietchze. This man with the impossible last name.

Cedar