Fairy Tales and the Healing Journey

New Leaf

Well-Known Member
“The child must know that he is a miracle,
that since the beginning of the world there has
never been, and until the end of the world there
will not be, another child like him.”
~Pablo Casals
 

New Leaf

Well-Known Member
Wonderful share Cedar. I have often though that fairy tales were the works of folks like us who had difficult childhoods.

This is taken from the website you shared, I thought of you when I read it.

Holly Black
"Bone Mother"

The daughter is too bold

to be anything but

a cuckoo in the nest.

Good girls sit home

and sew in the dark.

They don't go seeking fire

in the witch's woods.


http://www.mindful.org/healing-the-child-within/
Thich Nhat Hanh
"Sometimes the wounded child in us needs all our attention. That little child might emerge from the depths of your consciousness and ask for your attention. If you are mindful, you will hear his or her voice calling for help. At that moment, instead of paying attention to whatever is in front of you, go back and tenderly embrace the wounded child. You can talk directly to the child with the language of love, saying, “In the past, I left you alone. I went away from you. Now, I am very sorry. I am going to embrace you.”

https://www.psychologytoday.com/blo...sential-secrets-psychotherapy-the-inner-child
Stephen A. Diamond Ph.D.
"By initiating and maintaining an ongoing dialogue between the two, a reconciliation between inner child and mature adult can be reached. A new, mutually beneficial, cooperative, symbiotic relationship can be created in which the sometimes conflicting needs of both the adult self and inner child can be creatively satisfied."

We have been working so intently here at remembering and telling our stories, trying to figure out what is the truth of them, sitting with our feelings. Journeying towards our past, looking for answers.

At times, we have felt lost. Here is an inspiring talk about wayfinding towards who we really are.


The class I am taking is tedious, and takes me away from the work here, I am following along with keen interest, and rising early to post, walk and reflect.

Healing.

What a beautiful word.

Thank you Cedar

leafy
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
http://www.mindful.org/healing-the-child-within/

Thich Nhat Hanh
"Sometimes the wounded child in us needs all our attention. That little child might emerge from the depths of your consciousness and ask for your attention. If you are mindful, you will hear his or her voice calling for help. At that moment, instead of paying attention to whatever is in front of you, go back and tenderly embrace the wounded child. You can talk directly to the child with the language of love, saying, “In the past, I left you alone. I went away from you. Now, I am very sorry. I am going to embrace you.”

I love this. These are the extra words, the words of meaning and intention and acknowledgment I did not have.

Thank you very much, New Leaf.

"If you are mindful, you will hear his or her voice calling for help."

Before, I had words and images. For that imagery too intense for me to encompass, I found witness. It is different, now. Now, when I am in that place that happens after a level has been breached, I am in a wordless, nameless place. I am in everything that lives beneath shame.

I am there to save Dorothy.

Whichever thread we discussed that on, that is where I am. Abandonment lives there, and globalized feelings that are without eyes or a name to limit them. The active, living hatred fueling the things that happened, the physical nothing more than evidence of the spiritual energies behind the act. It is very much like being lost, New Leaf, and I thank you and agree wholeheartedly with the TEDx speaker you posted for us about how that feels, and about the value in it.

So, Joseph Campbell's (and everyone else's) Hero's Quest.

Fresh perspectives cannot be attained if we think we already know. That is why we have seek the place where we are lost. When we are lost, then we can know there is a possibility of finding the healing path.

And if we don't find it, at least we can know we are still lost, and then, we have hope.

Which is the next thing to faith, and is all we need.

Holding faith with ourselves in the lost places, something once so impossible for us, is the healing.

But I still think we will find the words. The words will make it easier to remember.

***

When we have no words, we have no way to erect barriers between ourselves and the feelings. They go global, infecting everything. For those raised gently and with intention the globalized feelings will be good ones. High self esteem, for them. Positive grandiosity, reflected in the mother's eyes, is the way I once heard it described. For us too, in some areas. But for us there are other areas where the feelings globalized will be contempt; will be shame at the contempt as we learn to hide it from ourselves, adding a sense of guilty deceit. This was described, in that same article I read so long ago, as negative grandiosity, reflected from the mother's eyes and into those of her infant.

Globalized.

What went global for us, and why, and reining that in with our words and our bravery and our powers to define things into or out of existence be declaring them of value or declaring them, understanding them, to be valueless things; empty shells of what might have been.

Shame becomes an intrinsic presence; it becomes our most intense feeling state,
our go to response because it is bearable, compared to the contempt that spawned it.

But as we heal, we learn shame is something we created to save ourselves from what lies beneath.

Then, we choose lost.

We stay present to it by remembering that we carry with us everything that matters.

And then, we remember we are not lost because we navigate by the stars.

Which have seen everything.

***

It is very much like being lost, Leafy. A decision to stay with those feelings brings words I can try and cast away and try again, coming nearer each time to unraveling spells cast in that wordless time before words. When we understand that the abusers, if they were our parents (and probably this is true for the sibs) is this: Had they not loved us, we would not be alive to our kindness or pain or joy. We would be dead inside. Instead, we are alive enough to suffer.

So, that's good, then.

If they loved us, they loved us desperately. They were hurt themselves, to have done what they have done. That is why they lie now. They will not survive knowing what happened. We will never know whether their challenges were so much deeper and more devastating than our own.

So, we will believe they were.

In this, we can find respect for the mothers. (Or the entire Family of Origin.)

And a personal daystar begins to shine, giving us its light.

That is a quote from Maria Harris.

Cedar

This is another way of saying they did the best they knew. But for us, for those of us hurt in our childhoods, it will help us to know that what the parents surmounted to do their best by us was horrific.

Then, we can know their bravery, and feel pride in our own blood, again.
 

New Leaf

Well-Known Member
eckhart-tolle-suffered-humility.jpg

leafy
 

New Leaf

Well-Known Member
And if we don't find it, at least we can know we are still lost, and then, we have hope.

Which is the next thing to faith, and is all we need.

Holding faith with ourselves in the lost places, something once so impossible for us, is the healing.

And then, we remember we are not lost because we navigate by the stars.

Which have seen everything.
Yes. We are also not lost because, according to this article below, we are all linked together, connected not only as humans by our experiences, but by an inert gas in the air we breath, that has been present on this earth for eons. Therefore, we are connected to everyone and everything, with every breath we take.
We have seen everything, too.
https://healingmankind.wordpress.com/2012/07/29/breathing-gandhi-eternally-connected-to-others/

In The Sacred Balance, Suzuki quotes Shapley as saying that "Your next breath will contain more than 400,000 of the argon atoms that Ghandi breathed in his long life. Argon atoms are here from the conversations at the Last Supper, from the arguments of diplomats at Yalta, and from the recitations of the classic poets." And from the exhalations of the dinosaurs, the whales and the sabre-toothed tigers.
Air, says Suzuki, is "a matrix that joins all life together," past and future as well as present. We inhale our ancestors and exhale into the lungs of our children.
http://www.thegreeninterview.com/blog/most-important-idea-world-sunday-column-march-20-2011

It is very much like being lost, Leafy. A decision to stay with those feelings brings words I can try and cast away and try again, coming nearer each time to unraveling spells cast in that wordless time before words. When we understand that the abusers, if they were our parents (and probably this is true for the sibs) is this: Had they not loved us, we would not be alive to our kindness or pain or joy. We would be dead inside. Instead, we are alive enough to suffer.
"Had they not loved us, we would not be alive to our kindness or pain or joy. We would be dead inside. Instead, we are alive enough to suffer." They loved us, the only way they could. We are still here.
If they loved us, they loved us desperately. They were hurt themselves, to have done what they have done. That is why they lie now. They will not survive knowing what happened. We will never know whether their challenges were so much deeper and more devastating than our own.
Yes this what I meant when I wrote it is too hard for my sis to look back at my story. Not only because our perspectives are different, because deep down inside of her she knows.
So, we will believe they were.
In this, we can find respect for the mothers. (Or the entire Family of Origin.)
And a personal daystar begins to shine, giving us its light.
Giving us light, because we have been brave enough to ask the questions, to seek answers and solutions. The light has been there all along. The more we know, heal and grow, the greater the flame.

This is another way of saying they did the best they knew. But for us, for those of us hurt in our childhoods, it will help us to know that what the parents surmounted to do their best by us was horrific.

Then, we can know their bravery, and feel pride in our own blood, again.
We are all imperfect humans, trying to do our best. Who can know why one person is this way, or that. As you wrote, Cedar the human spectrum of emotions is a symphony.
Each human that has lived, or will ever live, contributes in their own way to the music.

leafy

I had a strange experience today......

I had to go home from work. I had a terrible headache, sick to my stomach. It started out, my usual sinus issues. I plodded through my walk, then went on to work and my headache shifted, I felt dizzy. My neck was tense and sore. My eyes hurt with the light. I realized it may be a migraine, I haven't had one in quite some time.

I stayed still, my head in my hands shielding out the light. My office mates asked me what was wrong, and I could barely speak. I felt queasy and motion sick, even though I was not moving. I drifted off to this weird dream space. I thought I was having some kind of brain attack. I had to leave work and struggled on the short drive home. Hands gripped the wheel tightly as I struggled to push past the pain and waves of nausea. I stumbled into the house and fell on the bed.
I didn't have any migraine pain medications, so I drifted in and out of a fitful sleep. I hallucinated. It was rather weird. I saw images, shadows in the window. I had short dreams, my sister on a white horse, smiling and beckoning me to ride with her. Running through fields of tall grass. Swimming in the ocean.

Hubs in the backroom unzipped his backpack and the noise of the zipper said "Help".

It was a strange, altered state.
As I write now, I feel woozy and floaty, but not nauseous.
The right side of my head, which was affected earlier feels....odd.
I am not crazy, I had a migraine.
Auras.

This has been brought on by stress.


Healing..........


I need movement, and have been saddled with this class. Four hours, three nights a week. In the nights I have attended, it has been mentioned several times, "You will never have to use this material in your job"

Well hello, then why am I here?

It is bothering me because I am finding out that the syllabus is over inflated to satisfy grant requirements. We received a huge complicated medical terminology textbook (we will never use this in our jobs). I am not allowed to call a rash, a rash (small red itchy dots) but am leaning and being tested on latin and greek root words, prefixes and suffixes, singular and plural, 14 chapters of a textbook that looks like something premed students use. "Oh, and by the way" the instructor says with a wink, "You will be tested, but here are the tests, with the answers, just study these." Ahem. Isn't that cheating?

All I can think is, this is all bs and we are pawns in the system.
Fine for the other participants, but I, healing, living breathing Leafy, have no time for this.
I am not a pawn.
Peace out, class and bogus certificate 2.

Healing.

The old Leafy would have trudged reluctantly through the 7 weeks.
This one says hello, first migraine in what, 20 years.
Your body is telling you something and you are going to listen to it.

"What you need to do, Leafy, is figure out a way to paint."

So, I am saving my money to build a small studio.

Healing.

My clay class instructor called to see if I wanted to do a raku session. "YES!'

Healing.

Life is precious. Time is short.

Healing sounds really, really good.

(((HUGS)))
leafy
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
This has been brought on by stress.


Healing..........


I need movement, and have been saddled with this class. Four hours, three nights a week. In the nights I have attended, it has been mentioned several times, "You will never have to use this material in your job"

Well hello, then why am I here?

No one knows. But you are. So, you must do your best. It's my understanding that Latin was once the language of the educated around the world. This was so because of the power of the Church both to educate and to decree what would be taught.

And there you are today, holding those words in your mind, understanding nuances of thought.

Can you view the class as something given to teach you patience or humility?

It is a practice.

It has an end date.

You can do this.

Learning medical terminology is learning another language.

Piece of cake.

***

For the past few days I have been thinking about fairy tale heroines stepping into their new identities between one day and the next, and about how we carry our prisons within us in who we think that we are. If we envision the process of clearing material from a time before we had words or could make sophisticated distinguishments regarding guilt or envy or fear as facing into the Wind, sampling and learning and letting it go, that will help us not get stuck, I think.

So, here is my imagery for us:

QfT5sF7.jpg



:O)

Information on fairy tale thinking and what it can represent:


http://www.vmacgill.net/sleepbeauty.htm

https://thegodguy.wordpress.com/2011/01/16/sleeping-beauty-and-snow-white-—-not-just-fairy-tales/

***


Today, I am wondering how Cinderella learned to see herself differently ~ how she learned to value and understand herself and her role in life ~ once she was saved by the Prince. I mean, one minute she was Cinderella and the next, she was a cherished beauty who wanted for nothing.

How do you suppose Cinderella managed to acclimate herself?

That is what we are doing, now.

How did Joseph either not succumb, or recover from, the mindset "slave".

Or, Snow White. Sleeping Beauty, even. Red Riding Hood. Dorothy. Once their circumstances changed, how were they able to take competent charge of their stories. Given their backgrounds and what they believed to be true about themselves, how was it they were able to learn to interpret themselves in healthy, life affirming ways once their circumstances changed.

Once their circumstances changed....

That is our task, now that we know who the Liar is.

Step One was determining who was the Liar.

Step Two is to clear the lies. To negate the lessons the Liar taught us about ourselves ~ about who we were and what we might aspire to.

***

We have been posting about stars, about navigating by the stars.

A metaphor then, for flying blind, for sailing in the night, the water black and cold, the landmarks unfamiliar.

Which brings to mind the French pirate woman, with her black ships and red sails and lust of vengeance against the King who'd betrayed and executed her husband.

That is a true story.

Not so long ago, I read "Gods of Tango". This is the story of a woman whose choice is to live a marginal existence as a woman without the protection of a man in a time when women were not allowed to work outside the home except as prostitutes...or to masquerade as a man, herself. The book is an exploration of male and of female role and power and self image. Before that, I read an Anne Rice (writing under a pen name) having to do with sadomasochism.

I found these books helpful in gaining perspective on role and power and the mindset of abuser and abused. The courage required to break free of the roles we've been hurt into is an extraordinary and a lonely thing.

We will have been twisted into believing the abuser's take on these matters.

This is where we learn, seasoned sailors that we are now, to scent the Wind and alter our courses. Or, to paint our ships black and our sails, brilliant red, and demand vengeance.

Or simply to leave them behind and sail into the Sun.

That is what Joseph did.

And so, chose freedom, by his own decree.

***

How were each of the fairy tale heroines able to love without discovering first some measure by which they could love themselves.

Or is it like Neitzsche says, and love is there within us and was always there.

Snow White and Sleeping Beauty were gently raised. Cinderella was not. Yet, according to the fairy tale, Cinderella was who she was. Though the evil stepsisters tried to take Cinderella's Prince and the life he represented, they could not fit the slipper which hugged Cinderella's foot.

Because Cinderella was who she was.

Neitzsche's love came first.

***

The imagery describing what this time will be for us has to do with the tainted wind blowing still from the place of our childhoods. That taint will be so familiar to us that we will not recognize it. How does that poetry go.

In a far land of witches and ogres
in a time of princesses on strings
There was come, to those trapped on that I land
a staunch ally, from the Valley of Horses and Kings.


On the Wind they did ride, the princesses and the Ally
through Fire and thorough Smoke
to the Land, far and fair
On white horses with reigns of
black satin

Seeded pearl ribbands
in their Sun-scented hair


I will find the rest of the poetry.

That is the Wind from the past. That is the abuser, reaching out from the grave to affect our lives, now.

Those are the feelings we must sample and identify and hold ourselves in compassion from.

Again, it will serve us well to remember that any given point in our lives ~ our educations, our marriages, our interpretations of our first sexual experiences ~ or the ensuing ones, for that matter ~ our remembrances will have been, and will continue, to this day, to be tainted by those currents from our pasts.

When our children were so beautiful, when they were safe and when we were safe because they were safe, we loved and we healed and we even tried to make family with our still outrageously dysfunctional families of origin. We defended them. We said, "That is my mother." Or, "That is my sister." It was when our children became so troubled that we broke. Remember my mother's words, when our daughter went into her first dual diagnostic facility: "Well, looks like you weren't such a good mother after all, were you?"

The taste of that time is the taste of my childhood. Sneering contempt, laughter, at my pain and confusion, along with: I told you so. I knew it, and I told you so.

What a crock! And a mean one, too. Nothing helpful about it. No compassion, in it.

So, none of this self flagellation I have been doing for all these years had to do with anything real at all. Only my mother. Only the beggar that was me, looking for what I had done, where I had made the misstep that led to what happened to all of us.

***

I think it will be helpful for us to review family of origin responses to our lives and our children's lives ~ and for some of us, our marriages, too ~ falling apart. On some level, these will be the attitudes we held against ourselves then and continue at some level, to hold, now.

Where we see contempt or disparagement or surprising rage in our inner lives, there we will find the family of origin and the things they taught us about life, and about ourselves, enshrined.
girl-and-laughing-camel-2.jpg


And this is us, clearing that material.

***

This is the means by which we declare ourselves free of them. In our awareness that we will have been trained to believe ourselves broken and without power ~ which is every abuser's (bully's) primary objective, we learn the nature of the wrongness done us. Once we are aware of it, the wound will heal on its own. We are meant to be whole.

***

It is Brene Brown's "sit with the feelings" but with the deeper understanding that, for us, the feelings will be lies told to validate the insane realities of the Witch Mother. The lies told to us about ourselves will have been intentional. The lies will have to do with every smallest aspect of our interpretations of the essential selves that we are.

That was the win.

It is a kind of thievery.

That is why we could never make sense of it ~ any of it. The win was that we would believe them over ourselves. To them, manipulating our belief systems regarding their value and our own looks like winning. And here is the spookiest part ~ there was nothing personal in their drive to do this.

They do it to everyone in their lives.

Have a look.

You will see.

Huh.

That was the missing piece we weren't getting. That is why no matter what we did or how many times we extended the benefit of the doubt until it became so routine to do it that we blinded ourselves to the building intensity of it in our adult lives, we could not ever change it. That is why we think that when we fell into that shattered state of vulnerability in our grief over what was happening to our kids, we think they attacked. They always attacked. We were not vulnerable until in our desperation to help our kids (and ourselves), we listened to them. Once we realized we had been badly hurt by listening to anything they thought, it was too late.

My mother really did predict a terrible ending for my daughter. With glee. That was the rest of the conversation the night D H insisted we call our parents to tell them what had happened to our daughter.

Oh, how I wish I'd had this site then.

I am so grateful it exists, now.

***


Anyway, once we got that part about how rotten and hurtful and weakening the words spoken over ourselves and our children had been, we kept trying to figure out how angry or disgusted or filled with black hatred we would need to be before we would do to someone else what has routinely been done to us.

And we literally could not imagine actually speaking the hurtful word, or even, allowing imaginary vengeance.

What we are not getting is that their behaviors were nothing personal.

There is nothing personal about what they are doing today.

Abusers abuse with impunity. Their timing may be off sometimes, or they may miss their mark occasionally, but they have a million irons in the fire. That is the piece we are missing. They do not repair relationship. They go away for awhile and reappear, knowing full well where we are vulnerable and, through long practice, just how to go about eliciting our attention. Which is also a theft.

So, there's that.

Here is the answer: We are genetically unlike them. We will never get it. They will never change. They are as incapable of changing their behaviors as we are.

***

To confront and refute these things we were taught about ourselves is to defy the Witch Mother within. We have been navigating imaginary shoals all our lives. There are no shoals. These waters carry no dangers we are not fully capable of identifying.

And turning to whatever the ocean's equivalent of compost is.

Yet we have sailed timidly. We have sailed at night, lest the Witch Mother find us.

Without the lies to guide us, how can we possibly guide ourselves.

Here again, we are different than those raised in kinder homes.

New Leaf had posted about her activities as a young woman, beautiful as all young people, male and female alike, are beautiful. Like Snow White, like Sleeping Beauty, New Leaf died to herself for a time ~ probably, like us, until the birth of her first child. Copa's Sleeping Beauty kiss.

Copa, I miss you.

***

So again, confronting these matters, for us, requires enormous determination to heal. More than for those raised in kinder homes.

The resolution I made to be kinder ~ not kind, but only kinder, was crucial to my healing. This tells us that prior to that consciously taken decision to be kinder, my guiding principles had to do with the cruelty of a forever unattainable perfectionism. This is the way I was taught to navigate the challenges of a life. I was taught, and you may have been too, to fail through perfectionism. The key: To fail. To subvert ourselves and sap our energies by whirling around some psychic black hole of their creation, a place where even the white magic of light is never released.

The method is immaterial.

For me, it was perfectionism.

This is real life. Nothing is perfect, not for any of us. For others of us it will be some other go to feeling state. It makes a circle. The circle moves. The names fueling the circle have to do with fulfilling the expectation of abysmal failure, justifying the contempt, the negative grandiosity, in the witch mother's eyes.


That is the taint on the Wind.

To please the internalized Witch Mother we must justify to ourselves (!) her contempt. (And in so doing, survive. That is what the Witch Mother held over us: Life. Disfigurement. Terror and pain and the heat of that. Bear in mind there are things I have not posted here.)

I cannot stress enough that this is the underlying truth in our traumatic remembrances. The remembrances are traumatic because we risked a mortal risk to confront the Witch Mother who was hurting those we ~ however that happened ~ were pledged to protect. This is a piece of how we came not to matter to ourselves and probably, to them. We made that decision, like Martin Luther did too, because we could do no other.

Their dynamics will be different, but for all of us, we did what we had to, to live.

Thinking in this way, seeing in this way, assists us in attaining internal, versus external, locus of control.

So we cast our fates into that crippling wind and are only now recovering ourselves.

We are thrown into a sleep, into numbness, into an endless repetition of fulfilling those role expectations designed to destroy us for a win we will never believe in.

***

Snow White and Sleeping Beauty reach for something beautiful. The red apple, for Snow White. The spinning wheel, for Sleeping Beauty. The betrayal, in both cases is from a jealous female, who poisons the symbol of adult womanhood. For a time, each dies to herself. Snow White...what do the dwarves represent? Sleeping Beauty...what do the thorns represent.

We know that for Sleeping Beauty, the thorns were self-created. This is so for us, too. A defense mechanism, or a series of defenses, grown wilder and sharper through the years. Dismantled instantly not through love, but through trusting herself to love and be loved. Because the Prince worked through the thorns. Because the Prince believed a different truth that was stronger than the truth (than the Lie) the Witch Mother told.

Raised as she was, how would Cinderella have fared after coming to the castle? After marrying the Prince.

Think of the outrage displayed by the Ugly Stepsisters, each trying to masquerade as Cinderella.

Are these roles, the stepsisters, the wicked queen who is the most beautiful in the land (a perfect description of the demands of perfectionism), the offense taken by the thirteenth fairy who sentenced Sleeping Beauty...are these roles internalized in us, the living toxicity shining away like some bleary lighthouse guiding us today by the immoral values systems we knew growing up.

Today, I am thinking recovering ourselves has less to do with rewitnessing deep trauma ~ though that was a necessary step ~ than it does with sampling the air of our childhoods for toxins. Like contempt. Like thievery. Like ridicule.

We breathed that in.

We are comfortable with being held in contempt and at some level, require it to orient ourselves in the world at large.

This is the basis of my lack of trust. I am certain the betrayal is in the works.

Where is Copa, now.

Gone.

***

Maybe that accounts for our sense of directionlessness, for that feeling of not knowing, that attends healing.

Think of it this way: What would that adult who did (or allowed to be done) what went on in our lives have to be like as a person. I have posted at some length regarding the eyes of my abuser, or her sneer. Or her sense of entitlement, which my sister also dares to have, crying when she does not get her way, which has to do with flaying the victim to the bone for her sake. (Or ~ we are back to my mother, here ~ with her strength, when she kicks or hits or throws things. Which has nothing to do with a bid for pity and everything to do with knowing I was that little, that vulnerable. And that I was raised with those eyes looking at me. That is the feeling of Whore. Speculative; exposed. Time. Sun.

Time stops.

A judgment is made.

Hmmmm.

Cedar
 

New Leaf

Well-Known Member
In a far land of witches and ogres
in a time of princesses on strings
There was come, to those trapped on that I land
a staunch ally, from the Valley of Horses and Kings.
I go to this land today......I am subbing as a rep for a friend who cannot make the annual meeting for the non-profit I was involved with.
The one where for ten years we worked to try to bring people together, only to be brought tumbling down by a potion of lies and slander.
Witches and Ogres.
They are still walking amongst us today, people who are unscrupulous and mean spirited, who would hold themselves above others, while working behind the scenes to annihilate any who would question their actions.
That is the leadership, who would smite the minority from existence, so they can continue unchecked in their skullduggery.
It will be an interesting meeting.
I could walk away, if it were not for friends who stood beside me and fought for the right thing to happen.
So I go.
A bit hesitant.
But, like the legendary surfers who rode Waimea bay on Thursday, giant waves of 30 feet with 60 foot faces, there was no being there with timidity.
It was either charge forward, or be eaten.
So I go.

And there you are today, holding those words in your mind, understanding nuances of thought.

Can you view the class as something given to teach you patience or humility?
I suppose I could, Cedar, patience and humility. I could devour this book and learn, without the cheat sheets. No one would know. The terminology is intriguing. The book, very differently written from text books of long ago, jumping all over the place with inserts and examples. It is the new way of learning. I guess, I could look at it as a blessing, not a curse. Tread on with courage and not dread. For me. Okay, I will. I can do this. Latin and Greek meets geek. I say geek with the highest regard. I remember you writing that your friends think you are a geek, that is a compliment, I say. The Urban dictionary defines it as this....
The people you pick on in high school and wind up working for as an adult
The geeky kid now owns a million dollar software company.

It is also defined in conventional dictionaries as a person who is socially inept. You do not strike me as that. I would say a better definition is "one who thinks out of the box and does not conform to societies norms, is self driven and motivated by their own thought process."

Learning medical terminology is learning another language.
Yes, indeed, it is learning another language. How amazing that these ancient languages are still used in our modern world.
Okay, I will take in a deep breath and stay. The class has an end date. I will navigate the stormy waters.

leafy
 

InsaneCdn

Well-Known Member
Geek:
I would say a better definition is "one who thinks out of the box and does not conform to societies norms, is self driven and motivated by their own thought process."
Leafy, you should be writing a dictionary. I like your definitions!
(especially this one, because I am a "geek"... right down to working in the information technology industry)
 

Scent of Cedar *

Well-Known Member
I suppose I could, Cedar, patience and humility. I could devour this book and learn, without the cheat sheets. No one would know. The terminology is intriguing. The book, very differently written from text books of long ago, jumping all over the place with inserts and examples. It is the new way of learning. I guess, I could look at it as a blessing, not a curse. Tread on with courage and not dread. For me. Okay, I will. I can do this.

You can do it so easily, New Leaf. The terminology is intriguing. There are so many times in our lives when we just say: I am here on purpose. I don't know why this is happening, but I will do my best.

And we win.

Somehow, these opportunities are there to change our paths. And they do. we discover unknown realms within ourselves.

I am so pleased and proud for you. This is a new path, a new thing, a place where you do not know. Embrace it. New facets of self will open.

Really, Leafy. I am pleased and proud for you. I know you will do well. Simply do what is in front of you to do. No resentment. That stuff has to do with FOO issues, I just know it. There it is. Do your best. We are very bright. We can do it and there is no telling what we will do with it.

Very happy for you.

I miss Copa.

Cedar
 

Copabanana

Well-Known Member
I miss Copa.
I missed you too. I am not wholly back.

The new computer arrived. It is horrible too. I hate it so much. The tablet broke entirely. M will not let me use his tablet because he says I eat computers *well only in emergencies and to him posting is not an emergency.

Have I missed a whole lot? I thought so much about here. I am kind of back. I posted on the narcissism thread.

I hope you are well.

COPA
 

New Leaf

Well-Known Member
Step Two is to clear the lies. To negate the lessons the Liar taught us about ourselves ~ about who we were and what we might aspire to.
It is up to us. We have been through the fire, now to clear the cinders. We will not be afraid of making mistakes and unlocking full potential. Because it was in us all along to be who we are.
Because Cinderella was who she was.

Neitzsche's love came first.
Cinderella was who she was, nothing could dampen her spirit and courage. She had her values and principles, despite being treated unfairly and horribly by her step mother and sisters. She persevered in the face of difficulties.
She made use of her suffering to become stronger.

When our children were so beautiful, when they were safe and when we were safe because they were safe, we loved and we healed and we even tried to make family with our still outrageously dysfunctional families of origin.
For, me, my family was not outrageously dysfunctional, perhaps, mildly. I do think that I found strength and purpose bearing children and am thankful for the blessings.
The taste of that time is the taste of my childhood. Sneering contempt, laughter, at my pain and confusion, along with: I told you so. I knew it, and I told you so.
When the kids went off the rails, it was a pain that ripped to the core of me. Awoke many old, deep feelings. I am sorry Cedar, to suffer when our children suffer, and not have understanding and love from family. That is ugly.

"The stepmother is mean to Cinderella and favors her own “ugly” daughters. Symbolically, the female gender represents the affection or love of some worldview. This tells us that a harmful influence and its derivative (and ugly) offspring are threatening Cinderella’s soul and its rightful goodness (birthright)."
So, none of this self flagellation I have been doing for all these years had to do with anything real at all. Only my mother. Only the beggar that was me, looking for what I had done, where I had made the misstep that led to what happened to all of us.
We are all imperfect and make mistakes. My kids were quick to point out instances that I wish I could have done a better job. There was a point in my grieving over my two that I felt awfully guilty, but I think that is part of the process. Reviewing and wondering, if I had done this, or that. In the long run, it is up to all of us to find our way out of the fog, even the kids. I would imagine most parents in the throes of this, even ones who did not come through difficult childhoods and dysfunctional families, went through a time of guilt and felt responsible for the choices the kids made. You are not a beggar Cedar. All of the stuff stuck way down deep turns around to this inner voice that can be so negative and self destructive. Remnants of the past came roaring forward. But, we are clearing out the cinders.
Cinderella thought no less of herself when her step-mother reduced her to a maid to do her bidding. Yes, it hurt deeply, but she knew who the liar was.
No, you are not a beggar.
Nor, are you a pebble in anyones shoe.
We didn't believe in our own ability, we forgot, Cedar, what it took to survive. We forgot that what we needed was within us all along. We forgot how incredibly brave we were, and are.

"Therefore, the fairy godmother’s turning a pumpkin into a coach, represents turning goodness into doctrine or vehicle to carry one through life. Turning mice into horses represents transforming something small and insignificant in one’s mind into a greater capacity for understanding—which pulls one’s heart and belief system in the right direction."

Where we see contempt or disparagement or surprising rage in our inner lives, there we will find the family of origin and the things they taught us about life, and about ourselves, enshrined.
Sweep out the cinders.
And this is us, clearing that material.
I like that image very much Cedar, how strong the little girl is.
This is the means by which we declare ourselves free of them. In our awareness that we will have been trained to believe ourselves broken and without power ~ which is every abuser's (bully's) primary objective, we learn the nature of the wrongness done us. Once we are aware of it, the wound will heal on its own. We are meant to be whole.
“To be sure, man's search for meaning may arouse inner tension rather than inner equilibrium. However, precisely such tension is an indispensable prerequisite of mental health. There is nothing in the world, I venture to say, that would so effectively help one to survive even the worst conditions as the knowledge that there is a meaning in one's life. There is much wisdom in the words of Nietzsche: "He who has a why to live for can bear almost any how”― Viktor E. Frankl, Man's Search for Meaning

Abusers abuse with impunity. Their timing may be off sometimes, or they may miss their mark occasionally, but they have a million irons in the fire. That is the piece we are missing. They do not repair relationship. They go away for awhile and reappear, knowing full well where we are vulnerable and, through long practice, just how to go about eliciting our attention. Which is also a theft.
It is a theft. It is the difference between empowering, and power over. The truth, is we never gave them permission to power over. I believe we held on tightly to the part of us they were trying to smother.

It is up to us to clear out any remnants left, to see through our own eyes and to empower ourselves.
We have to work hard at cleaning out the remaining cinders left from the hearth of our past.

We are present, and this is our "ever after".
Time to grab hold of life and live it, joyfully.



(((HUGS)))
leafy
 
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