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A Death in the Family
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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 685075" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>Thank you, New Leaf.</p><p></p><p>I think the first team, leaping and shouting and so frightening, represent our fear of the unknown. Our fear of not being enough; of not being equal to the task. I think the Scotsmen standing without shirts or weapons or false bravado or the certainty of the win represent...I think they represent what it is to stay present. </p><p></p><p>The Scotsmen are an example of steady state. They are a visual representation of Viktor Frankl's contention that what happens to us matters less than the self we birth through our responses to our situations. The Scotsmen are a visual representation of standing before what is. Right, wrong, or indifferent, there is no posturing in them. I have the sense that, other than showing up for it, the Scotsmen did not behave in ways that would instigate a fight. In their respect for themselves and for what is, they neither fidget nor run. </p><p></p><p>They stand naked.</p><p></p><p>Like we do, here in FOO Chronicles, to learn the truth of the things that happened and that are still happening, so we can lay claim to ourselves and our lives, and not be ashamed.</p><p></p><p>We are like the Scotsmen in that way. Or we will be.</p><p></p><p>They represent the concept of nothing to protect. </p><p></p><p>They are just so real. Going role would not help them now in any case. But they simply stand there, attentive and fully aware. </p><p></p><p>That is what I see in that imagery.</p><p></p><p>There is no shame. There is no fear. There is no bravado. That is self-acceptance. Winning or losing matter not at all. Standing up matters. </p><p></p><p>Accepting what is without rancor or fear matters. </p><p></p><p>That is my goal. No rancor, no resentment, no fear, no shame. It is what it is.</p><p></p><p>I love that there is no expression on their faces.</p><p></p><p>They just do the next right thing.</p><p></p><p>Thank you for asking, New Leaf.</p><p></p><p>I am not in that place of courage or self acceptance, yet. *** I wrote these words the day New Leaf responded and asked the question. The concepts have clarified over time. Now I am more sure. For those reading at some future time, know this is how it works. It takes a number of days for the concepts to clarify. </p><p></p><p>Hold faith that this is so. Sit with the feelings. Journal them in some public place if you can. Maintain your anonymity.</p><p></p><p>Part of that clarification has been to demand better of myself than to pander to denial.</p><p></p><p>It has been very hard. </p><p></p><p>And very worth it.</p><p></p><p>I feel raw.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I was in contact with the brother who died, Leafy. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I am glad, Leafy.</p><p></p><p>I am changing too, down in the secret darkness where hurts are protected. </p><p></p><p>Maybe the best way to describe what happens is that we recover our "NO".</p><p></p><p>And when we do, we find we have recovered our yes, too.</p><p></p><p>We live with our whole hearts, which have come alive, again.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>He knew I loved him. Communication was sporadic, but always kind. </p><p></p><p>I am at peace with his passing, and with my response. </p><p></p><p>You all have been part of my coming into balance around this brother's death. </p><p></p><p>Thank you.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>With my mother, it was two years in March. With my sister, it will be one year, in June. I think that is correct. My brother (I have two brothers) will have been two years this past April. </p><p></p><p>This is the second time I have been shunned by my family of origin.</p><p></p><p>The first time was five years. </p><p></p><p>Whether I were participating in family of origin or not, everything that is happening would still be happening. To participate, I would, to various degrees, have joined in creating the reality of denigration, and denied the brother who has died while he lived. When he died, I would have attended his funeral <em>though neither of the other sibs attended the wedding of this brother's daughter. I did. Nor did they acknowledge the birth of his grands</em>. <em> I did.</em> To me, the ultimate condemnation here is that they attended his funeral. Regretfully pondering, <em>with his family and children,</em> how rotten he was and how wonderful they all are to have come together for his funeral. Killing more than two birds with any number of stones, they slip the scapegoat's guilt into the pockets of his children while proving there is nothing wrong, here at the heart of the family of origin.</p><p></p><p>This is the source of the rage. This dynamic.</p><p></p><p>How well they hide what is. How they blame the victim for his victimization.</p><p></p><p>But he is free of it, now.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Leafy, especially when we are in communication, there is no communication in my family of origin. There is regret that we are not the family we could be, but we don't know how.</p><p></p><p>My work here involves accepting what is for what it is. Anonymity is crucial to this process. I am ugly, here. It is helpful to know that the patterns of behavior in my family of origin are common to certain kinds of dysfunctional family patterns in other families. It is helpful too, to learn, here on the site, the ways healthy families interact. In this way, the burdens of guilt and resentment and anger having to do with my family of origin can be made to come into focus clearly enough to be examined. <em>We can learn to choose healthier ways to think about ourselves and our families. </em> </p><p></p><p>We can learn this.</p><p></p><p>At the heart of the hurt is rejection, which is a version of the Shun. The Shun in all its variations is a core dynamic in my family of origin.</p><p></p><p>Isn't that something.</p><p></p><p>And I feel so fortunate to know it, and to know that like love or hate or mental illness or sexuality, shunning too proceeds along a continuum. If shunning is a dynamic in your family, there will always be some version of it in play.</p><p></p><p>So says me.</p><p></p><p>:O)</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Devastating deviation from the norm (a child in trouble, an addiction or a mental illness) are addressed differently in healthy families. That a family member has problems no one knows how to address often becomes a catalyst for changing how such occurrences are viewed in the world at large. For instance, the Kennedy family changed the way mental health issues are addressed for all of us with their creation of Special Olympics. The story is a horrific one. Much of what that family accomplished had to do with addressing rage. Their story too was very hard. Somehow, they did what they did, and changed the world, not only for children and adults challenged in those ways, but for all of us, in that this family's story enabled all of us to examine and then, change, the way we see and assign value, both to ourselves and to one another.</p><p></p><p>Dr Martin Luther King. The Protestant Martin Luther. Maya Angelou. Viktor Frankl. Maria Harris. Karen Armstrong. Anne Lamott. Joseph, with his teaching about the internal mindset of slavery.</p><p></p><p>So many.</p><p></p><p>There are so many people who have changed the way we see.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>As I come through this time, I am seeing the correctness in blazing rage. Not in rageful destruction or behaving badly in public, but rage as a brilliant signpost to...something that matters, but that I cannot describe. I was so shocked at the intensity of rage. In fact, rage is a blessing. When we acknowledge our rage, even if we don't know what to do with it (like me) there is suddenly no need for the shame based dynamic of denial. </p><p></p><p>That portion of the game falls apart of its own accord.</p><p></p><p>We have colluded in our own blackmail for all of our lives. </p><p></p><p>This is the lesson, I think, in the story of Joseph's enslavement at the hands of his brothers. When we stop believing in them, when we begin to see through our own eyes and not theirs, we stop playing, and we stop paying. Suddenly, we see we have paid our good, good money (power/integrity of self in the sense of an unbroken whole) (<em>Courage, from coins minted in fear</em>) for a counterfeit cause.</p><p></p><p>Huh.</p><p></p><p>Their actions, their motivations, the nature of the win and the terrible burden of the cost of it enrage me. Good for me. Rage is clean. Like in the poem about the mosaic, (<em>when the tiles of that mosaic first composed in blood on stone fall seamlessly together, revealing no face but her own</em>) rage is the heart of me.</p><p></p><p>I wish it were love.</p><p></p><p>But in the raw honesty of it, rage is love.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>If my family of origin are mistaken, it is a question of vision. It is true they may not be responsible for their blindness, any more than I could see beyond my own. (Family Dinner)</p><p>That is why the Rocky imagery is good for me to remember. Or the Scotsmen. Or the mother teaching her child integrity of self. </p><p></p><p>Each of them, just doing the next right thing.</p><p></p><p>I am sorry for your father's pain, Leafy.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think maybe we are seeing what is for the first time. The hard part is working with the emotions we went into denial to avoid. </p><p></p><p>For me that is the hard part.</p><p></p><p>What I have learned in the nine days since my brother's death is that the forbidden emotion (rage) tells a truth we are blessed to hear. There is fear. The fear ~ I don't know yet what it is comprised of. I am afraid I am who they believe me to be. I am afraid<em> lest the abuser hated the very things I rage against, and found them in me.</em> I think that is the fear that fuels denial until it becomes automatic ~ until it becomes just the way our brains work. Fractured self image and fear of fraudulence at the heart of us, where core integrity was, in the beginning. Damaged, not defective, remember? </p><p></p><p>We disown inappropriate feelings, deserting and holding parts of ourselves in contempt, to do so. We are (I am ) like Nessie in that way maybe. The living mystery at the heart of Loch Ness. </p><p></p><p>Very cold water.</p><p></p><p>Very black.</p><p></p><p>Something in there. </p><p></p><p>We are correct, in our rage. I think rage may be the cleanest emotion. Hatred, resentment ~ those feelings carry the tinge of justification. </p><p></p><p>Rage is my own. </p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>Yes. </p><p></p><p>Radical Compassion for ourselves, in our rage and our ugliness.</p><p></p><p>Radical Compassion is necessary if we are to come through without re-traumatizing ourselves. Radical Compassion in the face of our fear that we are ugly, broken things, sickly certain the abuser will tell again the same truths that destroyed us the first time. (Here is the imagery of the Scotsmen again, lifting their kilts.) The challenge (and the healing) has to do with requiring that we accept and cherish ourselves <em>as a mother would. Accept and teach ourselves as a father would. </em>In healthy families, children are cherished and taught, from the time they are born, who they are to be in their interactions with the world. </p><p></p><p>Think of the little girl in the video of the lamb's birth. </p><p></p><p>Think of the self concept engendered through the mother's attitude. </p><p></p><p>Envision the integrity of self in the adult.</p><p></p><p>Fear of failure, fear of the unknown; fear of failure to complete the task successfully. The mother's question: Can you feel the nose. (Figure out where you are. There is no action to take until we know what action is required. That is what the mother taught her child in that video.) That is how we can know how to parent ourselves. Instead of panic, small, flexible choices, easily reversed, until we know where we are. This is how we know how not to be afraid.</p><p></p><p>Imagine having been raised that way. Imagine having known that one true thing.</p><p></p><p>Fear.</p><p></p><p>We will learn to stand like the Scotsman.</p><p></p><p>Yes. I like that commercial very much.</p><p></p><p>I may begin drinking Scotch, to remind me.</p><p></p><p>There too, the Scotsmen take time. They assess the fearsome situation. When it is time, they are ready.</p><p></p><p>No fear.</p><p></p><p>It is what it is.</p><p></p><p>Yay. Everytime we come to "it is what it is", we are probably correct in our thinking.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>So having written this post over the past days, I think I have learned about fear. That is the thing I am learning about. Rage is overwhelming, yes. But fearing it is a separate and very damaging dynamic. It is the fear that what we were taught about ourselves and one another is true ~ that is the thing that fractures reality. And the shards are edged in denial and shame, every one of them. </p><p></p><p>Thank you very much, New Leaf, for giving me the opportunity to clarify and compare my thinking with yours.</p><p></p><p>Fear, and how to know a better way. </p><p></p><p>That is what the videos are about.</p><p></p><p>Rage, shaming as it was for me, turns out to have been around for very long time. The lust of vengeance too.</p><p></p><p>Huh.</p><p></p><p>Who knew.</p><p></p><p>If ever I have a tattoo, it will be something to do with these concepts.</p><p></p><p>Rage is cleansing.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>And of the cost of the very real damage done. </p><p></p><p>I was talking to someone during this week about rage and family. Again, I heard that old saying that what we want most is what we have never had. Everything to do with Family of Origin is like, edged in fire for me.</p><p></p><p><em>Spew them out.</em></p><p></p><p><em></em></p><p><em></em></p><p>Thank you, New Leaf. It seems you are correct. I do seem to be coming into some kind of balance. An effortless one. Probably it seems effortless because I am conditioned to brace against the unknown things that I know. They say we hold the tension of it in our bodies.</p><p></p><p>But man, what a ride.</p><p></p><p>It was so good to know I was not alone in my ugliness. I think we do need witnesses before whom we decide to declare ourselves as we are. I was so appalled at the way I was thinking. </p><p></p><p>Now I am...well, I don't know.</p><p></p><p>Thank you.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 685075, member: 17461"] Thank you, New Leaf. I think the first team, leaping and shouting and so frightening, represent our fear of the unknown. Our fear of not being enough; of not being equal to the task. I think the Scotsmen standing without shirts or weapons or false bravado or the certainty of the win represent...I think they represent what it is to stay present. The Scotsmen are an example of steady state. They are a visual representation of Viktor Frankl's contention that what happens to us matters less than the self we birth through our responses to our situations. The Scotsmen are a visual representation of standing before what is. Right, wrong, or indifferent, there is no posturing in them. I have the sense that, other than showing up for it, the Scotsmen did not behave in ways that would instigate a fight. In their respect for themselves and for what is, they neither fidget nor run. They stand naked. Like we do, here in FOO Chronicles, to learn the truth of the things that happened and that are still happening, so we can lay claim to ourselves and our lives, and not be ashamed. We are like the Scotsmen in that way. Or we will be. They represent the concept of nothing to protect. They are just so real. Going role would not help them now in any case. But they simply stand there, attentive and fully aware. That is what I see in that imagery. There is no shame. There is no fear. There is no bravado. That is self-acceptance. Winning or losing matter not at all. Standing up matters. Accepting what is without rancor or fear matters. That is my goal. No rancor, no resentment, no fear, no shame. It is what it is. I love that there is no expression on their faces. They just do the next right thing. Thank you for asking, New Leaf. I am not in that place of courage or self acceptance, yet. *** I wrote these words the day New Leaf responded and asked the question. The concepts have clarified over time. Now I am more sure. For those reading at some future time, know this is how it works. It takes a number of days for the concepts to clarify. Hold faith that this is so. Sit with the feelings. Journal them in some public place if you can. Maintain your anonymity. Part of that clarification has been to demand better of myself than to pander to denial. It has been very hard. And very worth it. I feel raw. I was in contact with the brother who died, Leafy. I am glad, Leafy. I am changing too, down in the secret darkness where hurts are protected. Maybe the best way to describe what happens is that we recover our "NO". And when we do, we find we have recovered our yes, too. We live with our whole hearts, which have come alive, again. He knew I loved him. Communication was sporadic, but always kind. I am at peace with his passing, and with my response. You all have been part of my coming into balance around this brother's death. Thank you. With my mother, it was two years in March. With my sister, it will be one year, in June. I think that is correct. My brother (I have two brothers) will have been two years this past April. This is the second time I have been shunned by my family of origin. The first time was five years. Whether I were participating in family of origin or not, everything that is happening would still be happening. To participate, I would, to various degrees, have joined in creating the reality of denigration, and denied the brother who has died while he lived. When he died, I would have attended his funeral [I]though neither of the other sibs attended the wedding of this brother's daughter. I did. Nor did they acknowledge the birth of his grands[/I]. [I] I did.[/I] To me, the ultimate condemnation here is that they attended his funeral. Regretfully pondering, [I]with his family and children,[/I] how rotten he was and how wonderful they all are to have come together for his funeral. Killing more than two birds with any number of stones, they slip the scapegoat's guilt into the pockets of his children while proving there is nothing wrong, here at the heart of the family of origin. This is the source of the rage. This dynamic. How well they hide what is. How they blame the victim for his victimization. But he is free of it, now. Leafy, especially when we are in communication, there is no communication in my family of origin. There is regret that we are not the family we could be, but we don't know how. My work here involves accepting what is for what it is. Anonymity is crucial to this process. I am ugly, here. It is helpful to know that the patterns of behavior in my family of origin are common to certain kinds of dysfunctional family patterns in other families. It is helpful too, to learn, here on the site, the ways healthy families interact. In this way, the burdens of guilt and resentment and anger having to do with my family of origin can be made to come into focus clearly enough to be examined. [I]We can learn to choose healthier ways to think about ourselves and our families. [/I] We can learn this. At the heart of the hurt is rejection, which is a version of the Shun. The Shun in all its variations is a core dynamic in my family of origin. Isn't that something. And I feel so fortunate to know it, and to know that like love or hate or mental illness or sexuality, shunning too proceeds along a continuum. If shunning is a dynamic in your family, there will always be some version of it in play. So says me. :O) *** Devastating deviation from the norm (a child in trouble, an addiction or a mental illness) are addressed differently in healthy families. That a family member has problems no one knows how to address often becomes a catalyst for changing how such occurrences are viewed in the world at large. For instance, the Kennedy family changed the way mental health issues are addressed for all of us with their creation of Special Olympics. The story is a horrific one. Much of what that family accomplished had to do with addressing rage. Their story too was very hard. Somehow, they did what they did, and changed the world, not only for children and adults challenged in those ways, but for all of us, in that this family's story enabled all of us to examine and then, change, the way we see and assign value, both to ourselves and to one another. Dr Martin Luther King. The Protestant Martin Luther. Maya Angelou. Viktor Frankl. Maria Harris. Karen Armstrong. Anne Lamott. Joseph, with his teaching about the internal mindset of slavery. So many. There are so many people who have changed the way we see. As I come through this time, I am seeing the correctness in blazing rage. Not in rageful destruction or behaving badly in public, but rage as a brilliant signpost to...something that matters, but that I cannot describe. I was so shocked at the intensity of rage. In fact, rage is a blessing. When we acknowledge our rage, even if we don't know what to do with it (like me) there is suddenly no need for the shame based dynamic of denial. That portion of the game falls apart of its own accord. We have colluded in our own blackmail for all of our lives. This is the lesson, I think, in the story of Joseph's enslavement at the hands of his brothers. When we stop believing in them, when we begin to see through our own eyes and not theirs, we stop playing, and we stop paying. Suddenly, we see we have paid our good, good money (power/integrity of self in the sense of an unbroken whole) ([I]Courage, from coins minted in fear[/I]) for a counterfeit cause. Huh. Their actions, their motivations, the nature of the win and the terrible burden of the cost of it enrage me. Good for me. Rage is clean. Like in the poem about the mosaic, ([I]when the tiles of that mosaic first composed in blood on stone fall seamlessly together, revealing no face but her own[/I]) rage is the heart of me. I wish it were love. But in the raw honesty of it, rage is love. *** If my family of origin are mistaken, it is a question of vision. It is true they may not be responsible for their blindness, any more than I could see beyond my own. (Family Dinner) That is why the Rocky imagery is good for me to remember. Or the Scotsmen. Or the mother teaching her child integrity of self. Each of them, just doing the next right thing. I am sorry for your father's pain, Leafy. I think maybe we are seeing what is for the first time. The hard part is working with the emotions we went into denial to avoid. For me that is the hard part. What I have learned in the nine days since my brother's death is that the forbidden emotion (rage) tells a truth we are blessed to hear. There is fear. The fear ~ I don't know yet what it is comprised of. I am afraid I am who they believe me to be. I am afraid[I] lest the abuser hated the very things I rage against, and found them in me.[/I] I think that is the fear that fuels denial until it becomes automatic ~ until it becomes just the way our brains work. Fractured self image and fear of fraudulence at the heart of us, where core integrity was, in the beginning. Damaged, not defective, remember? We disown inappropriate feelings, deserting and holding parts of ourselves in contempt, to do so. We are (I am ) like Nessie in that way maybe. The living mystery at the heart of Loch Ness. Very cold water. Very black. Something in there. We are correct, in our rage. I think rage may be the cleanest emotion. Hatred, resentment ~ those feelings carry the tinge of justification. Rage is my own. Yes. Radical Compassion for ourselves, in our rage and our ugliness. Radical Compassion is necessary if we are to come through without re-traumatizing ourselves. Radical Compassion in the face of our fear that we are ugly, broken things, sickly certain the abuser will tell again the same truths that destroyed us the first time. (Here is the imagery of the Scotsmen again, lifting their kilts.) The challenge (and the healing) has to do with requiring that we accept and cherish ourselves [I]as a mother would. Accept and teach ourselves as a father would. [/I]In healthy families, children are cherished and taught, from the time they are born, who they are to be in their interactions with the world. Think of the little girl in the video of the lamb's birth. Think of the self concept engendered through the mother's attitude. Envision the integrity of self in the adult. Fear of failure, fear of the unknown; fear of failure to complete the task successfully. The mother's question: Can you feel the nose. (Figure out where you are. There is no action to take until we know what action is required. That is what the mother taught her child in that video.) That is how we can know how to parent ourselves. Instead of panic, small, flexible choices, easily reversed, until we know where we are. This is how we know how not to be afraid. Imagine having been raised that way. Imagine having known that one true thing. Fear. We will learn to stand like the Scotsman. Yes. I like that commercial very much. I may begin drinking Scotch, to remind me. There too, the Scotsmen take time. They assess the fearsome situation. When it is time, they are ready. No fear. It is what it is. Yay. Everytime we come to "it is what it is", we are probably correct in our thinking. So having written this post over the past days, I think I have learned about fear. That is the thing I am learning about. Rage is overwhelming, yes. But fearing it is a separate and very damaging dynamic. It is the fear that what we were taught about ourselves and one another is true ~ that is the thing that fractures reality. And the shards are edged in denial and shame, every one of them. Thank you very much, New Leaf, for giving me the opportunity to clarify and compare my thinking with yours. Fear, and how to know a better way. That is what the videos are about. Rage, shaming as it was for me, turns out to have been around for very long time. The lust of vengeance too. Huh. Who knew. If ever I have a tattoo, it will be something to do with these concepts. Rage is cleansing. And of the cost of the very real damage done. I was talking to someone during this week about rage and family. Again, I heard that old saying that what we want most is what we have never had. Everything to do with Family of Origin is like, edged in fire for me. [I]Spew them out.[/I] [I] [/I] Thank you, New Leaf. It seems you are correct. I do seem to be coming into some kind of balance. An effortless one. Probably it seems effortless because I am conditioned to brace against the unknown things that I know. They say we hold the tension of it in our bodies. But man, what a ride. It was so good to know I was not alone in my ugliness. I think we do need witnesses before whom we decide to declare ourselves as we are. I was so appalled at the way I was thinking. Now I am...well, I don't know. Thank you. Cedar [/QUOTE]
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