Forums
New posts
Search forums
What's new
New posts
New profile posts
Latest activity
Internet Search
Members
Current visitors
New profile posts
Search profile posts
Log in
Register
What's new
Search
Search
Search titles only
By:
New posts
Search forums
Menu
Log in
Register
Install the app
Install
Forums
General Discussions
The Watercooler
When people are ostracized from family, it is because the family did not like their choices.
JavaScript is disabled. For a better experience, please enable JavaScript in your browser before proceeding.
You are using an out of date browser. It may not display this or other websites correctly.
You should upgrade or use an
alternative browser
.
Reply to thread
Message
<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 656402" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>No; and to be pitied...that is the final abuse, the place where the thing is sealed in contempt. </p><p></p><p>That is exactly where we have to go, to heal.</p><p></p><p>Right there.</p><p></p><p>There is compassion, and there is staring, like a greedy voyeur, into the broken-spirited core of the very thing you were pledged to protect. The final step; a biting, ecstatic pity for the hurt done, for the thing accomplished. I think I died there about a million times.</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>I was thinking about my mom this morning. I have been so mean about her. No one would enjoy doing what she did; no one would do such things, again and again for all of her life, on purpose.</p><p></p><p>But that isn't true. </p><p></p><p>There have been those who enjoy torment and torture through all of time.</p><p>I can't decide if choosing compassion for her would be the final bastion of denial to my healing.</p><p></p><p>So we are going to keep the pressure on, here.</p><p></p><p>As it is in our lives with our children: If this doesn't work, I will go back to the old forgiving, compassionate ways. </p><p></p><p>A choice, and mine to make.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>But compassion, true compassion, must be based in truth. When it is based on something less, it is only a twisted form of pity.</p><p></p><p>Okay, then:</p><p></p><p>I see you.</p><p></p><p><em>I see you back.</em></p><p></p><p>And we are both human.</p><p></p><p>And we break, and break, and break.</p><p></p><p>Sunlight through rotted cloth. The Light; the joy underpinning all things, breaks through. The joy of creation, itself. Not to be outrageously dorky here, but it is all energy. As conscious beings, we are given, <em>but must claim, </em>the right, and the rightness, of self definition.</p><p></p><p>This is not about what kind of person, daughter, or even, mother, I am. This is about recovering myself in a way I can understand. For me, that would be words. If I can name it, I can know it for what it is; through awareness of what it is, I can will it into, or out of, existence. </p><p></p><p>What is real.</p><p></p><p>Reality is as I define it to be. They have been telling and telling us that all along, the mystics. Perception determines reality. What we believe is what is true, for us. In cases of abuse, our poor, battered egos have had to work overtime, forever. How sad ~ remember the times even my ego believed the abuser's determined interpretation. So...unlike Tolle, I believe my ego too, to have been a heroic thing.</p><p></p><p>Can't believe we made it.</p><p></p><p>It is what it is.</p><p></p><p>Another miracle. Probably able to do that because my grandmother loved us, one and all.</p><p></p><p>So do the right thing, the strong and strengthening thing. Because you never know. Whatever it looks like, you never know how much what you do matters.</p><p></p><p>Across the generations, even.</p><p></p><p>Maya Angelou touches on that idea, too. She says we have already been paid for, by those ancestors, and who knows how far back, who survived what they survived for that dream of a better future.</p><p></p><p>For us, though they did not know us and could not even dream then, of who we might be, of how we might look and feel and go about our business in the world.</p><p></p><p>But here we are.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>I was thinking last night too about why we need to go through this old business at our ages. <em>Because it is still happening, that's why. There is comfort and cherishment and strength and identity in functional family that even now, even at this late stage of the game, we are excluded from.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>That is why it matters.</em></p><p><em> </em></p><p><em>What do we do with that.</em></p><p></p><p>I wish and wish I had what I see other women sharing with their mothers. When I go back, when I give my mother access to me, to the heart of me, she is the same: Sly, and so determinedly destructive. </p><p></p><p>Like always, why?</p><p></p><p>Whatever could be the win, there.</p><p></p><p>Whatever could it be.</p><p></p><p>The patterns in her marriage are so similar to the patterns SWOT describes in her parents' marriage.</p><p></p><p>How could this be.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>I love it that SWOT is reconnected with her father.</p><p></p><p>My father is gone.</p><p></p><p>How wonderful ~ truly, how incredibly amazingly wonderful that you did not lose him. Can you imagine the wonder in it for him, to have a daughter come home, truth in her words and her heart a living, courageous thing.</p><p></p><p>Wow.</p><p></p><p>Miracle.</p><p></p><p>Bona fide miracle for you, SWOT.</p><p></p><p>And we never even saw it coming, and you stood up, anyway.</p><p></p><p>Spirit of the white mare and of the dancer's breath; colors, flaring and flying so high, the mosaic coming seamlessly together, beneath.</p><p></p><p>Beautiful.</p><p></p><p>If we all keep reclaiming ourselves like this, we are going to create an unmistakable path right through that primitive forest I am always posting about.</p><p></p><p>And you know how I am always posting about that lantern, that light we are holding for the rest ~ for the rest of us, for our full reclamation of self?</p><p></p><p>There is no lantern.</p><p></p><p>That is us.</p><p></p><p>That is how we look, now.</p><p></p><p>Remember?</p><p></p><p>"Comes the silence, burning</p><p></p><p>Burning...</p><p>bright."</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>I think recovering from an abusive past has to do with recapturing a destroyed sense of efficacy. That is what locus of control is all about.</p><p></p><p>Efficacy.</p><p></p><p>And that is the thing shame destroys. Whether the shame is come of childhood abuse or abusive therapists <em>or loving a child who turns defiantly self destructive</em>, that is the thing shame destroys.</p><p></p><p>Efficacy. A sense that we are capable of shepherding ourselves and those we love through it. That is the essential thing those of us who took our courage in both hands and did the best we knew, though we were never taught the good and strengthening things ~ that is what we did, what we have done, a thousand times. Believed we could do this thing.</p><p></p><p>That is why we are strong enough to do it, now.</p><p></p><p>But it was a choice, for us. </p><p></p><p>That was where it all caved in, when our children lost their ways: We lost faith in ourselves and maybe, in redemption itself. Not at first, but over time, we did.</p><p></p><p>I did.</p><p></p><p>We had been broken, before. We had been taught "broken".</p><p></p><p>Echoes of our own destruction; helpless in the face of our child's pain.</p><p></p><p>So, we break.</p><p></p><p>BOOM</p><p></p><p>Like a gunshot, right?</p><p></p><p>We hold and hold and hold, and then, we break.</p><p></p><p>We lose faith in ourselves. </p><p></p><p>Our abusers are there, like the witch in the dream that was a fairy tale come real, after all ~ as my mother was: "Well, you weren't such a good mother after all, were you?"</p><p></p><p>Here is a strangeness: I can usually see her, hear her, know the words by heart. Today, I am not so sure anymore, exactly what she said.</p><p></p><p>Healed, that hurt place.</p><p></p><p>No echo.</p><p></p><p>But now, instead of the shameful "No, I guess I wasn't.", the response would have to be: "What business is that of yours?"</p><p></p><p>So, that must be the taste of individuation.</p><p></p><p>If our abusers were consistent enough, if they were determined enough to destroy our faith in ourselves, we might never get it back, might never recover.</p><p></p><p>But we did. We took the broken pieces and created the mosaics of our lives, and they were beautiful, precious things.</p><p></p><p>BOOM</p><p></p><p>What must it be like, to believe in ourselves, to hold faith with ourselves that we can do anything we set our minds and hearts to <em>and to understand that if we fail, it is correct to hold faith with and to believe in ourselves, again and again</em>?</p><p></p><p>That is what we are recovering through this process. The right to hold faith with ourselves. That was the damaged thing, the thing that was taken from me, the thing about me my abuser could not abide.</p><p></p><p>Faith.</p><p></p><p>Strength.</p><p></p><p>Courage.</p><p></p><p>Note: When our daughter fell into the problems that would come to dominate her life, what did I sacrifice?</p><p></p><p>The thing that defined me. </p><p></p><p>The thing I had defiantly pursued, confronting and banishing that question both literally and figuratively every time that I took my courage and my faith in both hands and wrote. </p><p></p><p>"Who do you think you are?"</p><p></p><p>"Who do you think you are / How dare you / Don't you dare / Just don't think, Cedar." <em>You are what I say. A thing with no will of your own.</em></p><p></p><p>Believe as you like.</p><p></p><p>Maya: "You are here on purpose."</p><p></p><p>So, that is why we have engaged to this degree. We are back because we took the courage to defy the abuser's will and create our good lives again and again, a thousand times over. </p><p></p><p>Cedar</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/emoticons/starplucker.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":starplucker:" title="starplucker :starplucker:" data-shortname=":starplucker:" /></p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/emoticons/hugs.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":hugs:" title="hugs :hugs:" data-shortname=":hugs:" /></p><p></p><p>So, this is us, all of us, telling our stories and listening and being heard.</p><p></p><p><img src="/community/styles/default/xenforo/smilies/emoticons/choir.gif" class="smilie" loading="lazy" alt=":choir:" title="choir :choir:" data-shortname=":choir:" /></p><p></p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p>Thank you.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>So that is what I mean, what I am trying to define, in posting about the shame response.</p><p></p><p>A trigger.</p><p></p><p>Very helpful imagery, SWOT.</p><p></p><p>Thank you.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>And in my secret heart? I was certain I was repulsive. In some way that couldn't be seen, maybe. And in a thousand million ways that could.</p><p></p><p>Now, I am not so sure...but I think that, even at my age, I might be...hmmm. I might be something very different than I thought. There were many issues with my mother, over my appearance. This is an interesting piece. I probably do not even know what I look like, never having seen myself through my own eyes. Looking, and finding, proof of what the abuser decreed was there.</p><p></p><p>I never thought about it this way, before.</p><p></p><p>Okay. That's next, then.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>It would strike, and it still tries to, when I am putting on makeup or doing my hair. Working the Gallery has been very good for me. The artist has made an artform of wild, out of bounds hair. Sometimes, her only makeup is a line of bright blue paint beneath her eyes.</p><p></p><p>So I could be as ugly, as not-perfect, as I was on any given day.</p><p></p><p>A thing to be celebrated for what it was.</p><p></p><p>It is what it is.</p><p></p><p>Valid.</p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Okay. I am going to post this before I go back over this thread. Don't want to get a 10,000 word notice and not be able to post it, at all.</p><p></p><p>Keeps me honest, to post it.</p><p></p><p>The good things and the bad ones, too.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 656402, member: 17461"] No; and to be pitied...that is the final abuse, the place where the thing is sealed in contempt. That is exactly where we have to go, to heal. Right there. There is compassion, and there is staring, like a greedy voyeur, into the broken-spirited core of the very thing you were pledged to protect. The final step; a biting, ecstatic pity for the hurt done, for the thing accomplished. I think I died there about a million times. I see you. [I]I see you back.[/I] *** I was thinking about my mom this morning. I have been so mean about her. No one would enjoy doing what she did; no one would do such things, again and again for all of her life, on purpose. But that isn't true. There have been those who enjoy torment and torture through all of time. I can't decide if choosing compassion for her would be the final bastion of denial to my healing. So we are going to keep the pressure on, here. As it is in our lives with our children: If this doesn't work, I will go back to the old forgiving, compassionate ways. A choice, and mine to make. *** But compassion, true compassion, must be based in truth. When it is based on something less, it is only a twisted form of pity. Okay, then: I see you. [I]I see you back.[/I] And we are both human. And we break, and break, and break. Sunlight through rotted cloth. The Light; the joy underpinning all things, breaks through. The joy of creation, itself. Not to be outrageously dorky here, but it is all energy. As conscious beings, we are given, [I]but must claim, [/I]the right, and the rightness, of self definition. This is not about what kind of person, daughter, or even, mother, I am. This is about recovering myself in a way I can understand. For me, that would be words. If I can name it, I can know it for what it is; through awareness of what it is, I can will it into, or out of, existence. What is real. Reality is as I define it to be. They have been telling and telling us that all along, the mystics. Perception determines reality. What we believe is what is true, for us. In cases of abuse, our poor, battered egos have had to work overtime, forever. How sad ~ remember the times even my ego believed the abuser's determined interpretation. So...unlike Tolle, I believe my ego too, to have been a heroic thing. Can't believe we made it. It is what it is. Another miracle. Probably able to do that because my grandmother loved us, one and all. So do the right thing, the strong and strengthening thing. Because you never know. Whatever it looks like, you never know how much what you do matters. Across the generations, even. Maya Angelou touches on that idea, too. She says we have already been paid for, by those ancestors, and who knows how far back, who survived what they survived for that dream of a better future. For us, though they did not know us and could not even dream then, of who we might be, of how we might look and feel and go about our business in the world. But here we are. *** I was thinking last night too about why we need to go through this old business at our ages. [I]Because it is still happening, that's why. There is comfort and cherishment and strength and identity in functional family that even now, even at this late stage of the game, we are excluded from. That is why it matters. What do we do with that.[/I] I wish and wish I had what I see other women sharing with their mothers. When I go back, when I give my mother access to me, to the heart of me, she is the same: Sly, and so determinedly destructive. Like always, why? Whatever could be the win, there. Whatever could it be. The patterns in her marriage are so similar to the patterns SWOT describes in her parents' marriage. How could this be. *** I love it that SWOT is reconnected with her father. My father is gone. How wonderful ~ truly, how incredibly amazingly wonderful that you did not lose him. Can you imagine the wonder in it for him, to have a daughter come home, truth in her words and her heart a living, courageous thing. Wow. Miracle. Bona fide miracle for you, SWOT. And we never even saw it coming, and you stood up, anyway. Spirit of the white mare and of the dancer's breath; colors, flaring and flying so high, the mosaic coming seamlessly together, beneath. Beautiful. If we all keep reclaiming ourselves like this, we are going to create an unmistakable path right through that primitive forest I am always posting about. And you know how I am always posting about that lantern, that light we are holding for the rest ~ for the rest of us, for our full reclamation of self? There is no lantern. That is us. That is how we look, now. Remember? "Comes the silence, burning Burning... bright." *** I think recovering from an abusive past has to do with recapturing a destroyed sense of efficacy. That is what locus of control is all about. Efficacy. And that is the thing shame destroys. Whether the shame is come of childhood abuse or abusive therapists [I]or loving a child who turns defiantly self destructive[/I], that is the thing shame destroys. Efficacy. A sense that we are capable of shepherding ourselves and those we love through it. That is the essential thing those of us who took our courage in both hands and did the best we knew, though we were never taught the good and strengthening things ~ that is what we did, what we have done, a thousand times. Believed we could do this thing. That is why we are strong enough to do it, now. But it was a choice, for us. That was where it all caved in, when our children lost their ways: We lost faith in ourselves and maybe, in redemption itself. Not at first, but over time, we did. I did. We had been broken, before. We had been taught "broken". Echoes of our own destruction; helpless in the face of our child's pain. So, we break. BOOM Like a gunshot, right? We hold and hold and hold, and then, we break. We lose faith in ourselves. Our abusers are there, like the witch in the dream that was a fairy tale come real, after all ~ as my mother was: "Well, you weren't such a good mother after all, were you?" Here is a strangeness: I can usually see her, hear her, know the words by heart. Today, I am not so sure anymore, exactly what she said. Healed, that hurt place. No echo. But now, instead of the shameful "No, I guess I wasn't.", the response would have to be: "What business is that of yours?" So, that must be the taste of individuation. If our abusers were consistent enough, if they were determined enough to destroy our faith in ourselves, we might never get it back, might never recover. But we did. We took the broken pieces and created the mosaics of our lives, and they were beautiful, precious things. BOOM What must it be like, to believe in ourselves, to hold faith with ourselves that we can do anything we set our minds and hearts to [I]and to understand that if we fail, it is correct to hold faith with and to believe in ourselves, again and again[/I]? That is what we are recovering through this process. The right to hold faith with ourselves. That was the damaged thing, the thing that was taken from me, the thing about me my abuser could not abide. Faith. Strength. Courage. Note: When our daughter fell into the problems that would come to dominate her life, what did I sacrifice? The thing that defined me. The thing I had defiantly pursued, confronting and banishing that question both literally and figuratively every time that I took my courage and my faith in both hands and wrote. "Who do you think you are?" "Who do you think you are / How dare you / Don't you dare / Just don't think, Cedar." [I]You are what I say. A thing with no will of your own.[/I] Believe as you like. Maya: "You are here on purpose." So, that is why we have engaged to this degree. We are back because we took the courage to defy the abuser's will and create our good lives again and again, a thousand times over. Cedar :starplucker: :hugs: So, this is us, all of us, telling our stories and listening and being heard. :choir: :O) Thank you. So that is what I mean, what I am trying to define, in posting about the shame response. A trigger. Very helpful imagery, SWOT. Thank you. And in my secret heart? I was certain I was repulsive. In some way that couldn't be seen, maybe. And in a thousand million ways that could. Now, I am not so sure...but I think that, even at my age, I might be...hmmm. I might be something very different than I thought. There were many issues with my mother, over my appearance. This is an interesting piece. I probably do not even know what I look like, never having seen myself through my own eyes. Looking, and finding, proof of what the abuser decreed was there. I never thought about it this way, before. Okay. That's next, then. *** It would strike, and it still tries to, when I am putting on makeup or doing my hair. Working the Gallery has been very good for me. The artist has made an artform of wild, out of bounds hair. Sometimes, her only makeup is a line of bright blue paint beneath her eyes. So I could be as ugly, as not-perfect, as I was on any given day. A thing to be celebrated for what it was. It is what it is. Valid. :O) *** Okay. I am going to post this before I go back over this thread. Don't want to get a 10,000 word notice and not be able to post it, at all. Keeps me honest, to post it. The good things and the bad ones, too. [/QUOTE]
Insert quotes…
Verification
Post reply
Forums
General Discussions
The Watercooler
When people are ostracized from family, it is because the family did not like their choices.
Top