Hey, Cedar, or anyone interested in FOO (Family of Origin) issues. Cedar, WHY NOW???

[BusynMember]

Sometimes, I think Cedar that you have way more heart for your sister than I do for mine. Actually of the three of us, SWOT, you and I, I think SWOT is the most caring sister. SWOT suffers for her sister's pain

Beautiful posts. Breathtaking. They so tell of the pain you two have experienced.

Copa, you are wise. I do suffer for my sister because I know what HER life was like at home. I was there. I was older. I saw. My brother and I would tease her relentlessly. I started it. I was very jealoous of her back then, thinking she was the only sane one in the family. Not an excuse, but an explanation. She was seven years my junior and go crying to my mother, who was on the phone, talking her marathon calls to her own mother, and my sister would cry out for help. From me. From my brother. She deserved attention. She deserved help. My mother never did anything to stop us. Nothing. Maybe, just maybe, she shouted out "Stop it!" and then went back to her phone call. She was not protected as a child. She was the typical "lost child."

Copa and Ceda, she was a beautiful young teen. She didn't believe it. I worked at a pizza place where there were lots of teen boys, younger than me, who had crushes on me and I knew she'd be a smash hit there. I wanted her to know she was beautiful. And loveable. She did not want to visit me at work. I don't recall how she finally ended up coming there, but she did...and the boys went crazy...and she was so SHOCKED. So much like I am when somebody thinks I'm good at something. Remember too, we were raised to be "beautiful." I can still remember when she realized she was pretty. It was a sweet moment.

But the damage by being ignored was there. She suffered from a severe eating disorder in college and does to this day. Yes, yes, she calls me mentally ill and borderline and even evil to her anon. peeps. I don't care about most anon peeps and what conclusions they draw. They are not in my life. They don't care about her or me and will never know me. In spite of t hat, it is a fact that both of us suffer from mental illness. If you saw my sister, and she is still beautiful, you would be shocked by how frail she looks because she refuses to by m ore than 100 lbs. She is of slightly lower than average height and I know *I* look bad now that I am older even at 110 lbs. I look sickly and realize that when you get older being too thin is not the same as when you are young, but she can't see it. And I never see her eating. Her disease/illness breaks my heart. Any other problems she has, and she has others, have never been diagnosed. This one wasn't either, but she knows it is there. Anyone who sees her would know it. I feel sad that my baby sister, whom I loved more than anyone except for my kids, went through garbage, that I was a part of it, and that she has nobody close to her now other than th is jerk of a boyfriend who abuses her. Honestly, I wanted to strangle him when she would talk about him.

Although she ended up on good terms with my mother, I can see why and where she was conditioned to feel badly about herself, on many fronts, and to be afraid of intimacy and to dislike me. To like me was frowned on by my FOO and she craved their loved. Trust me, I get it.

I feel for my brother too, all alone forever. The almost spouse of my mother.But I don't know him. I still have no idea what his beef with me is because of not reading his letter. I'm still glad I chose not to...that by then I was taking better care of me. But he suffered. He is very ill and can not seem to have a loving relationship with anybody except his students. Don't get me wrong. I"m glad his students love him. It's good for him. But...I'll leave it at that.

At the same time, I was abused the most at home and after I left the home. I was and still am the obvious scapegoat and I'm doing well. It t ook me years to learn that I was loveable enough to marry a man who could love me. But I did it. I feel that if I can do it, with the hole I was dug, they both can too. Again, I know little about my brother. I know my sister seems to crave unavailable, superficially charming, handsome but abusive men and I am sorry for her. I tried to help her because she was in such agony over her boyfriend.

The fact that he has been displeasing her and abusing her for five years and she has never stopped seeing him or has NEVER gone NC with him tells me, with clear eyes, that going NC with me, who didn't do anything close to what he does even in her imagination, this is deep, ingrained and family stuff. That's all. So I feel for all of us, but I can only take care of one of us...me.

So, yeah, I know where shse came from and how sh e got here and, yes, I feel some softness even when she expresses none for me. I personally don't CARE what she thilnks about me anymore. I do wish she'd heal, but that is on her. I am no longer there to talk to her about her issues. I can't take care of myself and somebody else too. Especially when the person refuses to get out of a bad situation.

She is forced to read this because she is still emotionally attached to me. I am to her too or I'd never talk about her, however what she does saddens me but does not hurt me anymore. What s he says about me is sad, and in my opinion she is trying to hurt me, but she can't. I am immune to it. I'm used to it maybe? I have little stress in the rest of my life. I have love. I have peeps who are not dramatic and crazy. I don't need to dump on her too.

On the other hand, we all have a right to heal and writing has always been my go-to. This is a good place for me because there are just a few of us going through this and I've been here for so long. I could blog or journal, but I find it less helpful than group therapy, so to speak. And my truth is my own. Nobody can make me think my truth isn't true, so to speak. So while I must be done with both of my ex-siblings, and the love I felt once so sstrong for my sister, has died, I do k now where she came from. I was there. I saw. I saw her coping mechanisms and know them.

Remember how I told you that my mother used to call me selfish? It was her second insult next to "stupid." It did not make me think I was selfish. I DID think I was incredibly stupid and often sti ll do. But not selfish. I knew I had an easily broken heart of gold. I wish I had also been taught the correct socially acceptable way to express that heart, but I never learned coping skills at home. So my easily broken heart (read about Highly Sensitive People...this is a new topic altogether, but I'll bet we all fit)...my easily broken heart was hurt easily and sometimes I lashed out at who hurt me. I was very seldom the perpetrator though. Maybe my ex-sibs think differently. I don't care.

I feel very badly for everyone in my screwed up divide/conquer/black/white dysfunctional family, but I am letting them go at a steady pace, partly due to these "therapy sessions" we are having. I don't want to waste t he rest of my life on broken people who will not fix themselves. I am enough work for me...lol.

I so appreciate both of your intelligent and right-on-the-money feedback. I read every word. I learn.

 

[SuZir]

SWOT, not sure how to say this without it sounding weird or even stalkerish, but please remember that nothing in internet is very anonymous, not this board at least. And you have posted so much here during the years, that if someone would want to, they would learn really a lot about you.

I live other side of the world from you and I still know so much identifying information about you. I admit that I have better memory for trivia than most people, but it is everything here on this page to read for anyone. I know your and your husband's real names, I know real names of at least two of your kids. I have seen pictures of you, your husband and three of your kids. I think I also know a real first-name of your grandson. I know where you live, I know the name of the town your kid goes to college and type of school she is in. I know the sport she plays. It would be very easy to find her online based on that information. I know the name of the book you have published under the pseudonym. I know lot about your health and life history, your former employers etc. And of course I know about struggles your kids have gone through. That is really a lot of information for a total stranger.

And if I weren't a stranger but for example someone you would had gone school with, I would also know who your siblings are by name. And I have to say I have way too much information about their health histories, relationship histories, their kids, their occupations etc. considering that they haven't to my knowledge told any of that here themselves.

It is of course your right to tell about your life and your life history as much as you want, and I well understand it can be healing to you, but let's face it: Your siblings health conditions as an adult, their relationship situations etc. are not your life history, it's theirs. It is not really relevant to your life or well being considering you are not in contact with them and certainly are not responsible for them. If they want to share it here, they can sign up and do so. Otherwise I find it slightly uncomfortable I know so much about all that.

I don't mean any offence, but maybe it would help you to find peace not to follow the board she writes at and not to be so occupied on what they are doing with their lives right now.

 

[SuZir]

Just wanted to add: I really have not done anything extra to find the information I mentioned and I'm sure most people would not remember so much, but things tend to get stuck to my brain, if there is something intriguing in it.

Like I remember real name of one other poster's daughter, because in one language I know her name, which is really pretty in English, means constant whining. And I was intrigued by the name of your city, because I found it oddly named because to my knowledge there are no big bodies of water in the area. And your daughter's college town has the same name as one of my favourite products brand.

I also have to say that I remember you used to talk a lot about Borderline (BPD) and DBT helping you, so that may be why your sister thinks you are diagnosed with Borderline (BPD). I also have this odd memory that you had Borderline (BPD) mentioned in your sig at one point, but that I may well confuse to someone else.

 

[Copabanana]

her and I think she will and I think it will happen once no one else with whom my sister is in competition for our mother wants my mother.

OK. Things are a bit busy and do not know how time will work out and am exhausted. M slept almost all night on guard for his Mom, and I had to make breakfast which I normally do not do. So toast and coffee and an orange really wiped me out. You know how it is when what little routine there is...is upended.

So, just a few minutes of a break, and what do I find here: Gold and silver and coinage of the realm.

I understand, Cedar. It is the coin of the realm again. The value of your mother's coinage has been debased and may no more be of value to your sister.

If a time comes when no one wants your mother, your mother no longer has any relative or market value. Only intrinsic value and if your sister does not value her mother in an intrinsic way, as it appears was the case for my own, she has no use for her.

I want to say two things here. I have been perplexed as to why my sister wants all the photos, if she cares little for the actual person. And now I get it a little more. The photos are better than the person, because they do not have the encumbrance of relationship and need. They do not talk back, especially.

They can be manipulated and exchanged. And especially,they can be stolen and robbed and use to hurt others (me) to avenge. And new and better stories can be made with them to rebuke and negate and kill off the original.

So photos too are a system of relative value.

But getting back to the coinage. As we know, coins' value is largely symbolic, they are without any real intrinsic value. A house, for example, like a mother, can have both intrinsic value because it has a use, or market value (relative value), because it can be exchanged for money.

So, it makes a whole lot of sense, that your sister sees your mother in terms of coin, only in terms of what she can be exchanged for. And this is where it gets cruel and base: she may be using your mother as a source of value to extract pain, envy, jealously, discomfort, guilt and all manner of other profits from you and other siblings.

In accordance with your ideas, when she begins to feel that her mother coin, is no longer valuable to others; i.e. she is no longer seeing them suffer or no longer wanting to exchange anything at all for this coin that is the mother; put another way there is no existing market for your mother; the mother no longer has value to her.

So we have put aside entirely the fact that we are talking about your mother and my mother who are and should be intrinsically valuable and at least at one time had use value, as a Marxist would say.

Now you have brought to mind the whole related topic of the loss of value of older women generally. What they have lost in terms of our discussion, is they have lost their coinage value (exchange value). And does it not seem as if there is now a societal conversation going on as to whether they have intrinsic or use value?

there is something here having to do with the exclusion, and with the golden grand, and with the way my mother has changed and been made vulnerable to this sister over the issue of family; of unspoken accusation,

So here we bring in more of what happened with my Mother. When I have more time I will look at all of it again because I find it absolutely fascinating.

these disparate flashes of something that looks right and turns out not to be right at all indicate an insincerity.

So here is where we get to, to the capacity of your sister to care, to love, to connect rather than to manipulate the market, to hoard and to barter.

This is a very painful conversation to me. Now that I have run out of ideas.

I would guess that most young women and maybe some men market themselves; exchanging their coinage value for something or other, when young, especially; when not knowing better or for ease or utility or for need, having no choice or alternative.

What is painful here is trying to understand especially my own mother in these terms (not as painful is the case of my sister because I love her less, and that is a fact.) Who does not want to be loved in the same way you love....not with words or in any other way that can be manipulated or marketed or hoarded.

I want to know that my mother loved me as she died, as a mother, and that her love was a real thing, not a flash. Crying here, I am.

And now I want to add one thing: My mother never accepted, never, that she had lost any value what so ever. That was part of her rage: How dare you treat me such!!! I am of the highest of coinage, of value, as if to say.

Insisting she did, at the end incontinent and toothless and almost dead. My mother was never broken. By anything. And as I write this it is much a sadness for her as a virtue.

And I think that was the remarkable thing about her retaining her beauty until she died. Of course, she was beautiful. Even dead.

It was the insistence, of such, that was her real allure. She strutted her stuff into the 80's believing that she was gorgeous and investing all of the resources and time into making it so. And it worked, for her. Without surgery, without hair dye, only Chanel makeup and nice clothes, it worked, for her.

And the thing I don't get really is her confidence. Having risen in her life several social classes, at least, and acquiring the polish and confidence of the well born, kind of like I see in the female candidates on TV, except infinitely more charming and warm. And all of this because she willed it so.

Wonderful post, Cedar.

 

[BusynMember]

Suzir, I am sure nobody knows who I am.

I love DBT, but it's not just for borderline. And I have not been diagnosed with it.

Suzir, she is talking about me too on another forum. That's fair...it is w hat these forums are for. This is an open forum and a place to heal and without identifying people by name we can talk about them here. We do it all the time regarding our kids. I understand you seem pretty private about your life and that's ok. But I'm good with sharing what I have and quite positive that you could not find who I am no matter how hard you tried, and ditto for anyone in my family.

I do respect your posts and ideas and find you EXTREMELY intelligent and, yes, I think you probably remember things more than most people do. I don't know your education or background, but I just assume you are highly educated with quite a nice IQ.

Thanks for your input. Have a great day I always welcome and seriously consider your words as I feel you are one of the really top brains on this site.

 

[BusynMember]

I also have to say that I remember you used to talk a lot about Borderline Personality Disorder (Borderline Personality Disorder (Borderline (BPD))) and DBT helping you, so that may be why your sister thinks you are diagnosed with Borderline Personality Disorder (Borderline Personality Disorder (Borderline (BPD))). I also have this odd memory that you had Borderline Personality Disorder (Borderline Personality Disorder (Borderline (BPD))) mentioned in your sig at one point, but that I may well confuse to someone else.

Suzir, yes, I thought I had it. That's where my sister gets it from. But I was never diagnosed with it by anybody except me and since then my therapists, who have known me for a long time, feel I may have had borderline traits at one time (especially when I just left my abusive home) I don't have enough traits for the disorder to be diagnosed. So the diagnosis was mine and mine alone. I took it off when I was told I did not have it. We even went over the criteria (me and my psychologist). And my sister knows this too. Unfortunately, she just likes to use it in an attempt to paint me as crazy, which is totally her prerogative.

She is on a site where everyone diagnoses their nemesis as borderline. On the other hand, if I did have borderline (diagnosed) I would own it and fight it. I do love DBT. I don't think it is any sort of shame to have a personality disorder as long as you try hard to work on your problems. So if given the diagnosis, I would have kept it in my signature.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I don't for mine. Sometimes I wish for ill to befall her. Sad, but true. And if she reads this, So there.

One time? When my kids were just little guys and we were all just living our lives? My sister (very religious, remember) told me she and her other very religious people had prayed, with deliberate intent, a "ring of thorns" around me and my family, to "bring me to the Lord". That is the flavor of my sister. She rationalizes and justifies and parades the most eerie things in the name of something a person could...I don't know. Could get it that though the thing wished for all of us was bad, and that there were other people intending that same wish for very bad things to happen to me, and to my children, and to my family...it would be couched in terms, in such a way that my sister can stand on a sort of legitimacy.

My sister's intention did not harm us in the way that she hoped. What has happened to all of us has rational genesis; I can trace it. I can know that when I changed my responses, my children were fully capable of standing up and they did.

But...what a crummy, crummy thing to have done, however "noble" the outcome was to have been. (To not have to go to Hell.)

So that is the kind of person we are talking about, here. A person willing to sucker strangers on airplanes to give her money. A person willing to join with others to wish something bad in some convoluted effort to "save" them. A person with whom no event ~ no family event, no personal visit, nothing attended together, ever felt "right".

A person who snoops into things anyone with a sense of integrity or trustworthiness who has been invited into our home (or who has been invited to hers) would never do. Like: My brother told me my sister breezed in uninvited and began going through the mail on his kitchen counter. Reading what was from who, what were their bills, that sort of thing. He was so upset about it. He couldn't believe it happened. Or, one time, my sister was staying with us. And it was when I was in therapy and our daughter was having such a terrible time, and she knew I was journaling between therapy sessions. And after she left, I found that she had written a note to me toward the end of my journal.

Which had been hidden away because I did not want even D H to read it.

And she found it. Which means she had to search for it.

Things like that.

The last time I stayed with her at her home, there were three uncomfortable things of that nature. One, she commented that she was upset with her daughters because when they were guests in someone's home, they were so messy. Whereas my room was clean, my bed was made, the closet and even the things yet in my suitcase were in perfect order.

She said my mother was the same way. Everything in her room in perfect order when she was not in her room.

Generally when I stay somewhere, I strip the bed on the morning I am leaving and bring the sheets to the laundry room. My sister asked me not to do that. Not to strip the bed. She was insistent that I not strip the bed.

So, I just made the bed.

The third thing (this all happened on the same three night, two day visit) is that I had asked to bring a package of a foodstuff that my sister and her husband sell home with me. My sister acted a little funny about it, but said of course. When I got home, I found she had already placed a bag of that item in my suitcase. I have no idea when she had access to my bags.

There were other strangenesses, too. Things that were not exactly wrong, but that were weird, that leave a weird feeling.

Oh for heaven's sake. Happy Hour here, and I need to sign off for the night.

Until tomorrow, then, everyone.

Hi, SuZir

:O)

Cedar

 

[BusynMember]

A person who snoops into things anyone with a sense of integrity or trustworthiness who has been invited into our home (or who has been invited to hers) would never do. Like: My brother told me my sister breezed in uninvited and began going through the mail on his kitchen counter. Reading what was from who, what were their bills, that sort of thing. He was so upset about it. He couldn't believe it happened. Or, one time, my sister was staying with us. And it was when I was in therapy and our daughter was having such a terrible time, and she knew I was journaling between therapy sessions. And after she left, I found that she had written a note to me toward the end of my journal.

Cedar, that is so discouraging. When I was a teen, my brother read my diary. I didn't really care...it was mostly which boy I liked at the moment, but maybe snooping then has something to do with snooping now? Who knows? Why are they so curious about us?

Have a great happy hour!!!!!

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I don't know why they would snoop like that. A teenage boy might snoop in his sister's diary. But as a teenager, he would have known better but did it, anyway. I snooped in our daughter's diary after things started to go wrong and she was so mad about that. But I didn't feel it was wrong because I am her mother and I needed to know what was happening so I could help her.

And that seems to be the common thread, here. Our sibs seem to be snooping in ways that don't make sense. Even the teenage boy could be excused. Teen boys do all kinds of things they shouldn't but it is more about the sister being female I think, than it is because he wants to know about her in a secret and unsavory way. It's still wrong. Very wrong and how badly you must have felt.

Has he ever apologized?

Maybe you could write him a letter about how his invasion of your privacy left you feeling vulnerable and exposed and really hurt you. Not to be too dorky here (like that should surprise anyone at this point) but you could tell him you wish your relationship were better, and ask whether he knew how much that hurt you. (Clear it with your therapist first would be a good idea.)

Maybe he wonders too what happened, and wishes he could apologize but doesn't know how to begin, so he just turns away. Then, when your sister latches on, he takes her side because he doesn't know what to think about any of it.

I get that feeling from my brother. We are actually okay when my sister isn't there. When she is there, it's like he regresses and all he wants to talk about is how I locked them out of the house. And I just always say I'm sorry and etc. What I should say is ~ well, I don't know what to say, or I would have said it.

But I do know he only acts like that when my sister is there.

And it doesn't matter anyway because no one is talking to me at all anymore.

So there's that, then.

That's just such a lonely thing, after all we have all been through. I liked what you said on the other thread, SWOT. About what is now being the direct result of what happened when we were all little and doing the best we knew.

You said it better.

That is why I am putting what you said on the fridge, and not what I said.

I have too many words in the things I say.

But that is alright.

I am only a human person with things wrong with me, too.

SWOT? I remember your posting about it, when your book was accepted for publication. You may not see it SWOT, but she could be sick with envy and is responding to that.

SWOT?

Congratulations on your book publication. I love it that this happened for you. Are you still writing, or did you give it up for a time, like I did?

I hope you are still writing SWOT, and so sincerely, I wish you every success.

And lots of money, too.

***

Have you checked into e publishing? Do a little google search on it, SWOT. There are people making lots of money with their writing online. Audiences purchase the e book for $3 or something, and the writer keeps all but fifty cents or whatever. You have to figure out the cover and so on. That is how I am going to do it, once we are finished with FOO things and after the kids have visited. So that will be at some point toward the end of this summer. If I do well? Then I will post it here for all of us to know how to do that. If I do badly?

Then I will just keep it to myself.

:O)

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

My sister abandoned my mother (and me) for her last 10 months of her life, not returning phone calls, refusing to give even moral support, to say goodbye or anything at all.

How do I understand this? As either vengeance or fear and weakness. Or maybe both. In another post I will explain the vengeance part, as it is not pertinent here.

Well, that's pretty much what I am doing. I should be available to my mother while she is here near us during the summer months. When I am posting in one way, I think I will never see her, again. Nor will I attend whatever messed up funeral service is held, here or in that city where my mother stays with my sister in winter.

Then?

I think I am horrible for doing this. Which is true, actually.

That is what I am trying to figure out. What am I doing? How could it be that I am doing what I am doing. Time will be gone one of these days for one of us. How can I think this could be a right thing.

It isn't a right thing.

So, I post about it, and feel fortunate to have you both, and others who may post in, to think it through with. The thing is, the mother who parented me in those terrible ways also parented well at times. She is just a person like me.

Just a human, like me.

So I should call her. I think that is what I will do. But I will do it once we have gone through the things I never do like to have a look at. Then, I will be able to meet whatever it is head on. I don't have a problem with saying what needs to be said once I can see what it is. I always usually say what I think needs to be said, but apparently I am getting this really wrong.

So, there's that.

The man who still wants to marry my mother last I heard, has lots of money and he is very strong. He is strong enough to cope with my mother but not strong enough to cope with my mother and my sister. He continued to send my mother gifts, and to call her. (He bought her a phone so he could call her because no one at my sister's house takes, or returns, family calls. Apparently they do now, because my sister said, on that last phone call that finally did come and that I picked up, that my brother calls there all the time now, and that they talk to him.)

But when my mother first broke up with him and he had a broken heart and so on? Then, after a year or two? He emailed that he just couldn't make sense of things that he'd been told about me, about D H and me, and about everything and did I want to know what she'd said about me. (We'd been emailing all along. He would send the funniest jokes to everyone on his email list. And then when his heart was broken, we emailed about that a little bit.) And I said no. I did not want to know what my mother had said. I did not want to confirm or deny or know about any of that. Because here is a secret: Nothing my mother might have said would have surprised me. I know how she is. Even then, I knew that about her.) Regarding whatever he'd been told about D H and I, I said that he'd been married himself, and he had to know that marriages have their ups and their downs, and that D H and I had been married something like 36 years and I love and respect him, still.

So he understood that, but seemed surprised to remember just how long we had been married. As though my mother had intentionally tried to turn him against D H which she probably did and that did not surprise me, nor was there anything to say about how my mother presents things.

And all at once, he seemed to get it that maybe my mother had been telling lies. That maybe there were other things he should think about, too. And I did not tell him one word, not a breath of any of the things my mother had said about him.

And I never will.

And I told D H about the man offering to tell us what my mother said about all of us and boy, did D H want to know! So I said, then you tell him that, because there is nothing I could hear that would surprise me and I don't want to know.

But the man would not tell D H.

Which was the ethical thing for him to have done. I think offering to tell me was an ethical slip on his part.

***

It's one of those weird ways that things are in my FOO that just don't make sense. Initially, my sister's voice would take on this tired, haranguing note when I brought up the sudden inability to pick up the phone that seemed to be happening at her house when I would call, or when my brother would. (If my sister was not home? Her D H would answer the phone just like a normal person.) She would say they were so busy. (Unlike me and D H, who apparently do nothing but sit around and think up bad things about my sister ~ which is uncomfortably close to the bone just lately.)

Where was I.

So, I told her at some point, that no one is busy for six years.

Yet, just as it is with SWOT's sister, my sister has always called to talk about her marriage for an hour or two whenever she wanted to. She would call crying.

My sister can cry. I have a major problem with crying because it solves nothing. Sometimes I do cry, but I hate it when tears come in my eyes in public.

I hate that.

My grandmother could cry like my sister does, too. Huge, noisy sobs. Or she will be really quiet right after I say hello, like she is struggling to hold back the tears. (Or elicit that mothering response, now that I am thinking in such a bad way about my own sister.) And then she starts just boohooing and finally, after she calms down, she tells me what it is.

My mother does not cry. She takes charge. So poor mom. She must have been through the same kinds of things that happened to me.

D H cries at the sad parts of movies. Like I will not hear from him for awhile? And I look over and there are tears in his eyes.

And we just have to laugh about that, because he is actually more tender than me.

He cries at La Bamba, and at the part in Grumpy Old Men when Jack Lemmon has a heart attack and the other actor realizes he loves his friend. He cried for the horse in War Horse, when he was trapped in barbed wire but was freed by the soldier whose horse he turned out to have been before time separated them.

I don't remember exactly how that movie goes, but it was something like that.

But he can watch the end of Braveheart without batting an eye and I can't even watch that part. People are so cruel, and I hate that and it makes me angry and D H says, "That's how life is, Cedie."

***

So Copa and SWOT, if you are here reading along on today's diatribe, that is the answer to what kind of man it is who wants to marry my mother. Where the other stuff came from, about the phone and the crying, I think that has to do with manipulation. Is it a manipulation when my sister does that. I don't like to cry, even when I do it. Sometimes I cry of course, but I don't like it when I do. So, I think that would apply to my sister too. But if a person cries easily all the time in a way that is off key (My daughter can cry? But she is really mad, or really ~ well, mostly mad when she does and it happens like she doesn't even care if she is crying, that's nothing compared to what she is talking about.)

So, that would be honest crying.

That must be what I am trying to figure out, here. Always and forever, the question: What to hay is really happening here. So the crying part in my sister's case is a manipulation. She has the biggest, most incredible eyes, my sister. And it does make me feel sad when they fill up with tears. But you know what? No one who is really crying ~ they don't look at you while their eyes fill up with tears.

That is the difference.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

So the word that comes to mind for your sister is caprichosa which means something like capricious, willful, shallow, flighty, tempermental.

Well, I used to think that too. Like someone in emotional overload. But lately, when I see thing after thing ~ and especially Copa when I see the change in her over this time when all things having to do with my mother ~ with me for sure, and with my brother and his family and grands ~ I think my sister is coldly calculating.

I think that is true.

It is probable that as my feelings for my sister change, you are getting, or I am presenting, a different emotional take on her.

Cedar

I keep thinking about what you posted about the butterfly in the clear glass jar. Butterfly would be a symbol for regeneration, for change and a new kind of life that could never have been suspected from the lifeform of the caterpillar she was for so long.

So that was an excellent insight, Copa.

Unless I am being really unkind and unforgiving and etc.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

And this person...at least when they are in a good mood and not mad at you...chooses to attend to the strongest not the weakest parts.

Yep. That's my D H too. I say, "Is that really how you want to talk to your wife? Is that really how you mean for me to think that you think about me?"

And sometimes? D H hisses (or howls, as the situation, in his eyes, warrants) "YES!!!" And then he always tries to say I get him so upset. And there was a time, early in our marriage, when I believed him, and I would try harder to be better. But what happens between a married couple is meant to happen. It is meant to be that the stronger one is gentled, and learns to think before striking, and that the gentler one is meant to learn to think things through and see what is real and what is not, and stand up.

So now? Because we have been married so long and no one left and we really do enjoy sleeping in our bed right next to one another at the end of every day and seeing the other guy's eyes first thing in the morning and etc, when D H is in a mood? I say, "How long is this going to last?" And he says, already knowing he is at a distinct disadvantage, "What. How long is what going to last." And I say: "You acting like a jerk."

And then? I say: "Because I really want to know. If you are going to be jerky for like, all evening, then I am going to go find something else to do because I don't want to watch you sulk."

And etcetera.

So, that's how we do it, at my house.

We just did that the other day, in fact.

D H was so in a bad mood he could hardly stand to hear about that pirate thread Lil started. Things were much better this morning. At one point? Poor D H said: "The only one who cares about me around here is the dog."

What could I do?

I agreed, noting that the cat did not like him much lately, either.

:O)

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I see your daughter here.

You asked about my children, Copa.

After the school year the year all this started? Our daughter shaved her head and had the head chakra tattooed. And the artist told her this would create problems unless she took very careful and attentive care of herself, because he was opening a chakra point or something.

She actually looked very beautiful without hair. Part of that whole thing was to be a woman defiantly without hair or makeup or artifice. It was supposed to grow back before the school year started. But she never did go back to her school where she worked, that year.

Both my children are vitally interesting and like, blaring out emotions all over the place. They put things together in new ways and come up with the strangest things that they play and play with until they go on to the next thing. What is my daughter doing, now. She is gardening; making a garden where she knows where certain spiders make their webs and what lives in the soil and how everything works together and what lives in the woods around them and how the sun cycle is affecting the climate and so on. Last year, it was a kind of spider that lived near their barbecue grill. They stopped grilling altogether because the spider lived there. It was a female spider apparently, of the same kind that the spider was, in Charlotte's Web. There is actually a spider which makes decorative or decorated, webs. As did the spider in that movie. And my daughter posted pictures of the spider and the web throughout the summer.

Which was an incredibly interesting thing.

And she wanted to make lead casts of the interiors of ant hills, but I think she could never figure out just how to do it because I never heard that she did it. She knows so much about magnetic poles and sunspots and what is happening in outer space. She has her computer set up so that when she is not using it, NASA, or some similar organization having to do with searching the heavens, can access her computer's power to boost their whatever. She said I should do the same because budget constraints are affecting our ability to see what is out there and this will be something we all could do.

I was like, "Honey. We just learned how to answer our Smart phone without taking our own pictures. This setting up of computers so someone else can look at the stars or whatever will have to wait."

:O)

My son.

Looks so much like his father. Same flashing eyes, same explosiveness. But he is so witty, and so funny, like me. Once when he was home again to clean up, he hit a fox with his truck. And it was late at night and he just hadn't seen it in time to stop. And here he comes into the house carrying this poor, dying fox. He laid it on the counter in the kitchen and when it died, he apologized and said something like, "I'm sorry buddy, I did what I could for you."

And he covered the fox, and buried him on the hill behind our house the next morning.

He reads all kinds of things, novels and articles and textbooks when he wants to, and he understands the theory behind how things work. That is like his father, too. And he is so surprised at how it feels to love his children, and he keeps stumbling over that ~ over how you could love someone like that.

And he fees like he is the only one who knows that, and it never occurs to him that is how we love him.

He is not married to, but has been with, the mother of his child for something like ten years. She is beautiful ~ really, stunning looking, and very gentle in her eyes and her voice.

And our son used to have waist length hair; one day, he cut it and gave it to me. I still have it. Which is fortunate, because after that he kept it very short and now, his hair has grey in it.

So he tells me, now that we are speaking again.

We will see them this year, one way or another. We have been telling the kids we are not paying for trips home. So, he hasn't been coming home to visit, even when we are talking. Which we usually aren't.

But this year, we will see them, even if we do have to buy tickets.

We are all right on board with that idea of paying for the tickets except for
D H.

So, those are my children, Copa.

I like them very much.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I have little stress in the rest of my life. I have love. I have peeps who are not dramatic and crazy. I don't need to dump on her too.

This is true and very kind, SWOT. I love that you see it this way.

Remember how I told you that my mother used to call me selfish? It was her second insult next to "stupid." It did not make me think I was selfish. I DID think I was incredibly stupid and often sti ll do. But not selfish. I knew I had an easily broken heart of gold.

It's a strange thing, how it is that the lie sticks with us, that feels true, even in the face of the evidence of our lives.

I love the phrase "easily broken heart of gold."

Only intrinsic value and if your sister does not value her mother in an intrinsic way, as it appears was the case for my own, she has no use for her.

At the end, what is being sought as we create the tapestry of dysfunctional family, or maybe, of any family, is resolution and absolution. For us, those things could only be achieved through creating family, because that is where the essential wounding occurred; those are the truths or the lies we need confirmed. This is, from where I am seeing from this morning, the reason that family imagery, that dinner with candles and snowy white linen, resonates so strongly with me. I would cleanse myself in changing what was, and redeem myself in my own and in my mother's eyes by creating (resolution) and then, welcoming her into (absolution), the family she could not or did not or chose not, to create for herself because of her confusion regarding what worth her own children, having come of her body and blood, could possibly have.

In hating her children, her husband, her friends, in denigrating all things having to do with herself, my mother chose and confirmed her own value to herself. How does that old saying go? Anybody who would love me is not worth loving? Whatever her woundings are, self-hatred was and is, the core. That is the confusion we experience in our interactions with our mother, today. That, I believe, is why she cannot accept the adults her children have created of themselves. There is an essential disconnect that comes about as relationship is repaired. The adults who do not seem, initially, to be the hated reflection of a hated self, turn out to be those same hated, despicable children, who, because she did love them, awakened harrowing conflicts regarding self worth and self hatred. That is why my mother can value a daughter's appearance while treating her as a whore.

We are her children, things come of her body and her blood. That we may be attractive or accomplished can never change that essential, true thing.

That is the secret toxicity affecting all of us today. Because we are her children, we remain hated and reviled extensions of her own hatred of self. Our families, those families we create or the things any of us achieve, cannot be valid truths, to her. That is why she can only love one grand. The truth is that she is bad, and so everything having to do with her is bound to be bad. It could be that one child could have been born who was not bad. The others would then take on even the badness of that child. (The golden child concept SWOT taught us about.) Unless my mother can find steady, unshakable reflection of acceptance and cherishment, she will not heal.

This is where the man who insists he will marry her comes in.

He is a widowed Greek Orthodox priest.

He could do it.

But that is what my sister is trying to provide: resolution, absolution.

So she hates him with a rabid intensity that knows no bounds, because her own absolution rides on salvation for the mother. As she does this very good thing however, she has begun seeing through the mother's jaundiced eyes.

She may always have seen through the mother's eyes. When she was herself excluded, creation of family acceptance, of that non-exclusion pact I am always posting about and which she now denies knowing anything about, meant she too would find a place at the table.

I was the one creating family at that time.

That was my value.

My family, the picture perfect family D H and I had created, fell apart.

My sister found and married the man who is now her husband in a fundamental religious way that prohibits divorce. This is key. This sister has seen two marriages turn nasty. Now, with this man locked into the marriage she needs to make that dinner I am always posting about for herself, she will create the family she needs to accomplish resolution. She will have the mother there: absolution. I am no longer trustworthy mother substitute, willing to abide by the pact on non-exclusion, where she will find a place at the table because, with the falling apart of the family D H and I created, the table no longer exists, for any of us.

Once she had access to the mother, she no longer needs a place at someone else's table. With the mother as ally, the table she creates need not include the other sibs whom she has been taught to despise, along with herself. In distancing herself from the other sibs, she may be preventing her identification with them in the mother's eyes.

So that's what I see this morning.

And there is compassion, for all of us. A wheel of hatred, turning and turning, devouring us all whatever our intention. And as it seems always to be in abusive relationship, though there are victims and villains and heroes and losers and winners, there is nothing personal going on.

The pieces are interchangeable.

The wheel turns.

My mission, should I choose to accept it (as they say on that television program Mission: Impossible) is to do nothing. I have, as have each of the sibs in my FOO, created resolution in creating the families we each have created. We have not repeated the mother's essential error of hating ourselves through despising our children. That is the thing I was looking for, the place that I may have harmed my own children, in every therapeutic session I have been part of. It must be there to some degree. That is why the betrayal I felt at my daughter's desertion of her own children hit something cold in me. I chose to believe the psychiatric diagnoses because without them, I would not have been able to hold faith with my child whose unspoken task it is to validate the resolution I found in creating family. In a way then, the primary task of each of my children was my own absolution in breaking the chain of self and other hatred. That may be why detachment theory was so impossibly hard for me. When I finally stood up, I was confronting every demon, every true thing I knew about how family should not be.

So, I did good, then. I loved them enough to try.

That is why everything had to be perfect. I could not vary from the path that would see us all safe. My children broke that all apart, and now we are very real, and very human.

A triumph of love, after all.

Acceptance. Value found in the individual whether everything looks perfect, whether we look like the family I was determined to create, or not.

And again, the perfect response to all of it, to the impossible situations we find ourselves in, is not to take it seriously. We are who we are, and there are ways to declare that, however seriously the English king presents himself. Pompously offering to allow us to join in a quest for a thing we already have if we quarter he and his army for the night is the invitation to the dysfunctional family's interpretation of what matters. It need not matter, to us.

"What are you doing here?"

"None of your business!"

(That is from Lil and Jabber's Monty Python clip.)

We don't understand the nature of the king's quest. We do not accede to his legitimacy in the same way he does and expects us to. That is the thing I found in the Monty Python piece posted on Lil's pirate thread. And in Jabber's link to the Scotsman is the way family actually is. Everyone pretty messed up, but exuberantly being who they are and doing what they do to proclaim, and to lay claim to, what is.

Even when, though they are dressed to wear kilts, they have forgotten to put them on and parade away, celebrating who they would be if they had kilts.

We are all pretty messed up in that litter of puppies way D H family is, too.

And that is okay.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I wanted to add that the issues resolved (and resolving still) between D H and I in our marriage are the issues that enabled me to examine my essential self rather than to repeat the legacy my mother acted out with her own children.

Like always when the thing you found seems to resonate on so many levels and so, is probably some version of true, there are no heroes here, and there are no villains. We all are doing the best we know and when we know better, we do better. Every one of us, including my mom. I admire her courage. I am certain she fought a good fight that she could not win. She cannot possess and lay claim to healing because she knows that, in losing that battle with self hatred, she failed. She literally cannot face that and so, hatred and self hatred and other hatred continues to be the order of the day.

It could be that at some point, I will have the words for her. I am good with words but, like I always say here, I need to know what I see before I say words that can address it in a way that perceptions can change.

So, that is all I know, for today.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Monty Python - Holy Grail French Taunting

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

In the beginning? That is everyone in denial. Do you see the peasant, working away in the muck? That is my brother. There, but not a pivotal player. In this version, the scene is taken further. Throwing all sorts of things over the castle walls at the English king, at the authority "remembrance" or the family secret, that thing that cannot be questioned.

In that poem I would not complete for you here, there is a soaring cow. That is how the final three lines go. I am not going to post them here, because the imagery is disturbing.

But imagine my surprise at finding there is a soaring cow in this extended version of the original clip.

The kilt scene, that shows us all how to do this, from where we are, now:



Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Brave "Kilt" Clip

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

It could be that one child could have been born who was not bad. The others would then take on even the badness of that child. (The golden child concept SWOT taught us about.) Unless my mother can find steady, unshakable reflection of acceptance and cherishment, she will not heal.

So, in being able to love that one child, whatever that means for the others, the mother can experience the generosity of joy, and of loving without recognizing a reflection of herself in the grand or great grand who looks nothing like her but is hers.

So there would be the potential for salvation (through love again) in that situation, too.

There would have to be, or that situation would not have come to exist.

So, it must be that there are ten thousand ways for that to happen.

So it is true then, that there is nothing we have to do. It is already happening, whether we can make sense of what it is, or not. And it is true too when they say each of us has enough and a wealth of more than enough, from the beginning.

So all we are responsible for is to be kind when that is our option. The hardest person to extend that grace to being ourselves. Very hard, to do that. So, kinder, and not kind, will be a good beginning place for us. In being kinder to ourselves, we learn how to be kinder to those in our care because we are not wrapped up in trying to live our lives recovering from how harsh we don't sometimes know any better than to be to ourselves.

So, that's good, then. I don't have any influence in the broader world, I don't know what to do about hatred or terrorism or racism or any fanatical ism, but I can try to choose kinder to myself, for myself.

And that is all I know, this morning.

Kinder.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

That is why my mother can value a daughter's appearance while treating her as a whore.

Hi Cedar. As I read this post the latent message is unity of opposites. How surprising is it that your sister sought out a belief system based upon a binary system of good and evil, and thereby has a ready made system through which to exclude that which is dystonic or disturbing.

As long as your mother has split off in herself the parts that she will not see or feel, she is compelled to play this out in her relationship with others. That which makes her feel "not bad," is therefore momentarily held closer, that which does not, is expelled, repelled.

Her love is such that she cannot "in love" unite the pieces that are split apart, fundamentally in her, the me and not me.

the table she creates need not include the other sibs whom she has been taught to despise, along with herself. In distancing herself from the other sibs, she may be preventing her identification with them in the mother's eyes.

Of course this makes sense. Your sister seeks to identify herself with and bask in the "good" vision your mother has of herself however transitory and shallow is this "mother love" while she aligns with your mother's need to exclude the "not good" by projection onto the excluded siblings.

We are her children, things come of her body and her blood. That we may be attractive or accomplished can never change that essential, true thing.

This is the problem. Except at great cost, insuring that children follow the same careful dance, of banishing the imperfect, uncontrolled, or defective parts of themselves and ourselves, is near impossible, without destroying them.

And in the process of trying, there is a lot of agony and anger, emotions that are themselves messy, not fitting into the "good" image people like your mother and sister need of themselves.

So, I did good, then. I loved them enough to try.

Your quest, Cedar, seems to have been for unity of the opposites, that your Mother and sister have so feared and through their fear fought to maintain. You sought such unity in yourself, and for your family, aided by your beloved and oh so heroic children, together seeking out instead of fleeing from the hidden false, secreted pieces and exposing them.

A triumph of love, after all

I say, as well.