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

[Scent of Cedar *]

2/ Try to practice low to no contact with your tormentors. It is not the wrong thing to do. It is done in self-defense. These are soul killers. We can't allow anyone, dead or alive, to kill our spirits. I feel myself coming alive in a very new way, lighter, sweeter, happier, sure that they can never touch me again, physicallly or emotionally.

Very nice. I awakened multiple times last night thinking about my mom, about my sister, about this turning away.

Why am I angry? If I have truly decided to turn away, why am I angry?

Is it a matter of cowardice to turn away? Is there something I should be fighting for whether I win or not, whether my mother hangs up on me or not, whether my sister walks with the Lord and judges me from that perspective or not?

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

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

As D H said: "Your mother hung up on you. You did not hang up on her."

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

After choosing to see the toxicity...isn't it true that I can see it, like D H does or like M does, as that just being who they are.

Nothing to do with me; just who they are.

If I were just to accept that.

Child of Mine posted this morning, in P.E., about acceptance:

"I think the bigger issue for me is...merely acceptance. Of him, of myself, of everybody else. We are only human, and we do the best we can. That is what he is doing. That is what I am doing."

"I love him and I want to be around him, but I need to do that with boundaries and limits."

And there are the issues of responsibility as opposed to joy in relationship, and of automaton, versus trust or honesty in relationship.

But I cannot interact with them from their version of who I am, lest I come to believe it, too. And even if I maintain my guard, if I sift through every interaction for the harm in it to me to refute it, I would still be condoning their insistence on exclusion, on power over as a valid, healthy way of relationship when I know better; when I know the taste of that compromise. (So and so sits apart and we all pretend that isn't happening. So and so is not interesting. I owe so and so nothing, whatever she believed about her importance to me when she was a little girl. So and so's grands are less than. Accept it; compromise your values; accept mine.)

D H said something interesting the last time I was whooping it up about my mother and my brother and the tire rimming machine. He said: "Cedar. Those things used cost like, forty bucks. Who was exposed as the fool, there. Your brother...or your mom."

So then, I had to think about that one for awhile.

Who gets to name who what.

But it offends me that she did that.

In my family of origin, it seems that the intention in every interaction is a requirement that grandiosity be serviced; is a requirement that nothing real, nothing heart to heart, be allowed to happen.

We have seen that in each of our families.

So, belief in the culture of scarcity, when generous welcome could as easily have been chosen but was not. That is not just accepting who they are; that is compromising myself. ("Oh, that's just my mother; just my sister.)

That's accepting that we could not be better than who we are.

Which, as D H pointed out, is true. We are who we are.

Huh.

It has to do with my sister staying with us and leaving early to visit other condos for the purpose of choosing those that would have suited her better.

A culture of scarcity.

Or rifling my luggage while I was a guest in her home.

Or searching for and rifling my journal ~ my private thoughts and rages and losses and pain ~ when she was a guest in mine.

What was she looking for? How does she not feel a lack on integrity, of basic decency on her part, in doing what she does? And initially, I left it at that. But who does she name me, in doing what she does.

roar...and should that matter to me?

Or my mother leaving a copy of her Will on the counter and leaving the room, assuming I would read it. How do I make known I did not beat my wife? I cannot. She will believe I beat my wife.

roar

That is all I know.

Tricks, every one designed to ~ I don't know what they're designed to do.

I don't get the value in the win.

Somewhere in my psyche, I am sure my mother feels rejected, as I would if my children wanted nothing to do with me. Here is the difference: I reach out to mine. My mother does not reach out to me. Again, the question: Which thing is cowardice? Sending a card or refusing to send a card lest I be seen as weak, lest I be held in contempt. Here's the answer: I don't know.

Okay then. We know where we are. In the mud. No point pretending we are not in mud. Pretty hard to see with clarity and doing nothing is also a choice.

I will send cards for their babies and their weddings, as I do for my brothers' grands and weddings.

And they can think whatever they want to about that. Those are the things I am forever thinking about. That those gifts, pretty much from the heart unless I am trying to worm my way back in somehow, will be held in contempt; will be seen as weakness.

Have nothing to protect; nothing to defend.

What they think cannot matter.

Choose generous; choose enough, and limitlessly more, than enough.

They will believe as they like. Whatever I do or don't do, they will make of it what they will.

Please myself, then.

I could sign the card to my mother: "Cheesh. I wish you were not such a biatch. But you are, and I am so appalled at your behaviors I could spit. But I love you. And feel badly about the way it's all ended. So I am like, sending a card. It's a Hallmark. Of a family dinner."

Okay.

So maybe no card, then.

Lots of anger.

Because I feel rejected. Well, I have been rejected; humiliation, again.

But I am so angry, this time.

Because in our love with our children we had peeled back that part against we defended. And then when their love for us seemed to sour it felt like we had curdled too. A reconfirmation of the dreadful past.

Due to the sense of betrayal in it do you mean, Copa?

I very much felt angry and betrayed by my children, in the beginning.

Betrayal is a huge piece of what I feel regarding family of origin issues, too.

So...pride? Or determined moral standards.

I don't know. But I do know I do feel betrayed in both cases. I do know the kids lost real things through following the paths they followed. I do know my family of origin is harmful in the ways I have posted.

And I don't know anything else, at all.

I need to be cognizant that I tend to repeat the same thing over and over again. And it begins to feel like a blow, to my son. An undermining. A taking of advantage. There comes to be a time when a defense comes to feel aggressive.

Yes.

Is it true that every defense is aggressive...had we nothing to defend, response would not be required. That would be a fine place to be...but what then is the response to the child whose request is for support or approval for a lifestyle that is destroying him? How does a parent meet his or her eyes in the mirror, should the child die, knowing we have not spoken whatever the words are that we know, however ineffective or wrong headed, to change the child's path?

When we believed we were losing daughter, I had nothing to defend. It was over. All that mattered then was the wonder of having known her, of having her in my life; of hearing her voice, and of laughing, together.

We have to fight them for them, Copa. If there is an ending, all that matters then is that we had them in our lives. But when the ending does not come, then we defend them from themselves.

We know enough money is not the answer. Addicted celebrities who are wealthy live lives ever more firmly seated in addiction. So, I am contrasting that with "Nothing to protect; nothing to defend."

That is the problem D H and I lived. Helping is not helping; it turns into the corrupting moral ugliness of enabling; of coming to see our own children as weak. I remember describing it once as two horses putting on this tandem harness and pulling with all their might to get a stuck cart out of the mud. Over and over again. At some point, we have to decide not to put that harness on.

We decide to leave the cart in the mud. Loving the kids, we leave the cart in the mud and they hate us for it. They have been taught to believe they can drive however they want and we will come.

At the far end of it, we can either keep putting that tandem harness on or find some way to accept that our own children are homeless, when we have homes. There is a moral component in deciding that whatever happens is just what happens. Doing nothing is also a choice. So, we have to say what we see; the kids are not going to like it. They will feel we are attacking them because we are not providing what they need.

I think we conclude that what they need is self respect.

We leave the cart. We say: "I don't know, but I know you can. Respect for me is a beginning of respect for yourself."

A choice that the parent can take to risk something.

And even when there are drugs in the picture do we not have the responsibility to not offend unnecessarily? And by offend I mean from the point of view of the child.

To say that our children are responsible does not mean that we are not too.

Yes, that's crucially true, Copa. We have to be very aware and responsible in our communications with our kids. I ask for strength or understanding or to somehow say what will help them, and then, I just have to be okay with not knowing, with just hoping and holding an intention to do my best without hurting them.

For me, it is harder to do that than to fix it.

I loved her because she was mine.

I see that in D H family.

I could have a long time left and I don't want to waste it on people who have no care or had no care for me. In a very logical way, it is the right thing for me to do both for myself and those who do love me in the right way.

Benedictine prayer, this morning: "...for greater love and reverence; for the grace of simplicity and zeal...for the courage to be honest about our mistakes and humble enough not to dwell on them self-indulgently...."

Along with the "Witch, please!" Wizard of Oz poster, I found that beautiful, this morning.

Having completed Michael Pollan's Cooked (excellent), I am again reading David Brook's The Road to Character:

"The mind is such a vast, unknown cosmos you can never know yourself by yourself. Your emotions are so changeable and complex you can't order your emotional life by yourself. Your appetites are so infinite you can never satisfy them on your own. The powers of self deception are so profound you are rarely fully honest with yourself.

Furthermore, the world is so complex, and fate so uncertain, that you can never really control other people or the environment effectively enough to be master of your own destiny."

Here is the interesting thing. Brooks is quoting St Augustine. The discussion has to do with pride. If we believe we are human only through interaction, then we have a responsibility, as Serenity posts for us, to acknowledge when what is happening between those we love and ourselves is routinely abusive. What Serenity is saying is that we have a responsibility to ourselves, and to those we welcome into our wondering definitions of self and other, to oust those who persistently define us in abusive ways, lest we begin to take them seriously. Given this morning's quotes, it matters very much whether those we allow into our lives respect us and are drawn to us because they do respect us, or whether they are drawn to us to destroy us enough to elevate themselves.

Do all rise, or do only those red of claw rise.

"One key paradox of pride is that it often combines extreme self confidence with extreme anxiety.

"To move from a fragmentary life to a cohesive one, from a opportunistic life to a committed life, it is necessary to close off certain possibilities."


I am just stuck in feeling badly about estrangement. Maybe I am acknowledging that I am the estranged, and not the estranger.

Happy Hour here you two.

Thank you very much for being here for me.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Is there something I should be fighting for whether I win or not, whether my mother hangs up on me or not

As the mother, yes. As the daughter, no.

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

No. It is a reality. Each person has the right to decide for themselves. Not for the other. That goes for each. To leave. To stay. To abuse. Or not. Everybody gets one vote. Their own.

After choosing to see the toxicity...isn't it true that I can see it, like D H does or like M does, as that just being who they are.

That is how I beat myself up.

We are not them. Our families were not like theirs.

When M has a neutral expression I think he is mad at me. I get scared. For the last year or so he has begun sticking his tongue out at me when I look at him. I have never asked him why, but I find it immeasurably reassuring. I can relax and know he is not mad.

What in the world is wrong with me that I think that neutral expression might mean angry? And so what? I had done nothing. Nothing at all to warrant his being mean or mad--at me. This must be an internal state of mine. My default. To be afraid that I am inspiring anger, for what I do not know.

You Cedar, thinking I had a beef with you when I did not. SWOT thinking she is not smart...any time there is an opening.

That is why we cannot be D H or M. We are off kilter. Remember yesterday I said I thought that our worldview as children is woven like a vine throughout our psyches?

That those gifts, pretty much from the heart unless I am trying to worm my way back in somehow, will be held in contempt; will be seen as weakness.

See Below.

They will believe as they like. Whatever I do or don't do, they will make of it what they will.

Please myself, then.

Yes.

Loving the kids, we leave the cart in the mud and they hate us for it

Dear Daughter, too?

Respect for me is a beginning of respect for yourself."

Yes. I see this.

I am still hung up. Because in the case of an estranged child, we have the parent and the kid. Each of them needing the other. To begin coming together there needs to be at least neutrality. Not acid. Not base. Neutrality. If each one keeps restating what has already been said, how is that not perpetuating a war?

My son called 10 days or so ago. He stated this: I am going to the hospital today for blood work (this was a white flag.)

He needs me. He wants a relationship. He may or may not have gotten his blood work but he wants me.

I know that. I can choose to say: I need proof or I doubt you will go or why did you not go 2 weeks ago, or it is all too painful for me or whatever.

I did not. It was not because I have any self control or any sense.

But it was the right thing to not say anything that would challenge or trigger him. Because I want him. That is why, Cedar, you and husband dealt with Dear Daughter's visit as you did, I think.
.

 

[BusynMember]

And there are the issues of responsibility as opposed to joy in relationship, and of automaton, versus trust or honesty in relationship.

You've got me thinking.

What is one's responsibility to somebody who is a danger to us, emotionally or physically or even, say, legally (like using the police to make us behave). I guess, my responsibility feels like unless it is a medical emergency that I can help, because I am a DNA relation, I really am best having no responsibility. Not a card (I did that last year, but they didn't reciprocate), not a Happy Birthday (I got into trouble posting a funny post on FB...sister thought there was something wrong with the post. To this day, 'm not sure what was wrong with it. I did include a private joke, but it was no big deal). Honestly, nobody would have caught it but her.

And that's why I abdicate all emotional responsibility. First of all, it is not reciprocated. Secondly, the two of us are so different in every way that we don't think the same way at all. So she may be offended when I don't mean something to be offensive. My mother was kind of like this too, but that was because she was always needing to think the worst of me. How dare I do any good deed! I had an ulterior motive!

I guess it's hard for me to feel responsible for anybody who thinks about me that way. I think we are better apart, emotionally and physically and even on holidays. We can not even be courteous to one another because perhaps I am thought of as so low that a card is possibly seem as a manipulation of some sort.

So, Cedar, are you saying we need to have these relationships, even if they are this way? I don't mind if you think so. This is not an interrogation I am just curious.

Maybe I feel less passionate about DNA than most people. Ok, she gave birth to me. I know that. But what does that really mean when she never loved me? What did I owe her when she took every single thing I did and made it a bad thing? I did try. While she was alive, I was still trying to solve every ill between us because of my spiritual beliefs. I realize now that not everything is meant to be rectified in this lifetime. (Nonsense to you, I know, but it motivated a lot of my trying).

Now I feel even less passionate about the people who shared the same womb as me. I loved my brother to death when I was little. He was my best and only friend and we shared a lot. But that was more because he was there and I was there, being ostracized at school (both of us), than that we had similar DNA and similar personalities. WE did have things in common, interests in common...politics and sports mainly. But when he moved so far away and we basically lost touch as I went through my divorce and my life changed, we no longer kept up.

The other womb sharer was so different from me. We had a goofy sense of humor in common...nothing else. She once mentioned to me, when we were texting the very last time, that we had nothing in common. I asked her what she liked to do because we honestly never did talk about our interests and I wasn't sure what she enjoyed. She said she liked to garden and cook (all people with eating disorders like to cook), she was interested in fashion...forgot if there was anything else. I know my passions are pets, sports (especially the Packers), writing, reading, politics, she has no pets and would be bored just hanging around the house with family...

If you took the DNA connection part out of it we would never have had a thing to talk about as nothing bores me more than talking about cooking (as well as cooking), gardening, and fashion. And she is not the least bit interested in writing, sports, politics or hanging out at home.

She is probably like your mothers, Copa and Cedar, beautiful for her age and always dressed nicely with make up applied and hair done, even if the money isn't there. You both saw me. I am down home and simple and if I look ok it is an accident, not because I try. If I don't look good, I don't really care. I'm no fashion plate.

With the recognition that we are two totally different people who shared the same womb, and we don't even really like one another or think well about tone another's personality traits, do we owe each other something? I would rather she be absolved of owing me anything at all except to leave me in peace. And I am thinking perhaps that is what she may want too. And that's good because it is all I have left to give to either of them.
I don't mean this in a nasty way either. I'm spent. I'm done.

If my mother were still alive, as my father is, would I feel responsible to her in any way because I was in her womb?

With the way she always treated me and with her never being there for me and, worse, not even wanting to know my children, I do not feel I would owe her anything. We had a DNA connection and I'm sure that by now I'd have quit trying to make it ok and we would have been silent for a few decades. And of course I knew m siblings would take care of her. I don't think I could have had the heart to have been there in a meaningful way because there was no love from her when I screamed for it. And as I grow older, I find I no longer wish I'd had it with such fierceness.

I think each of us has to decide what we are responsible for regardingtpeople whwo share our DNA. Sometimes it is nothing and that is best. Other times it is a holiday visit once a year. Sometimes it's no contact at all. Other times it's contact with boundaries a few times a years.

I do feel it is different with our children whom, as mothers, we love and would like to nurture. Some adult children allow it. If we have a child who does not allow it, we can still love but can't act on it. That is sad. I know this. I am sorry for every mother with a hurting heart.

There is no rule book for what responsibility we have, if any, to other people. For me, I feel responsible only for those who are kind to me. This is a new way of thinking, but it works for me.

 

[Copabanana]

And there are the issues of responsibility as opposed to joy in relationship, and of automaton, versus trust or honesty in relationship.

I really am best having no responsibility.

SWOT, it seems clear at least to me that there is no joy or safety in your relationship with your sister. Every time you did reach out she used in as an opportunity to hurt you. Like my sister does to me.

I think we all see it the same--there is no obligation.

 

[Copabanana]

I have been catching up on medical stuff. So I went to the Pulmonologist today. I have Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD). Mild to moderate. With 70 percent of lung function. I got started on an inhaler.

I only smoked for 7 years, but my parents smoked, and the doctor said that counts too as a risk factor for this as well as lung cancer. My Mother had Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (COPD) too. And stopped smoking at 60. While lung disease killed her, she lived a long life.

I was disappointed I can no longer Scuba Dive. While I never did it, I bought us all equipment so that we could take a course.

I feel a little bit bad. I guess I am at the age to start falling apart, but I am not ready.

So, I decided to channel Jimmy Carter.

 

[BusynMember]

Im so sorry, copa. I am not sure how they treat this but hope the treatment helps.
This is probably a good enoughreason to take care of your stress level and do what you need to do to stay as healthy as possible.
Hugs and please take it easy. Be good to yourself.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

How did I lose confidence. Why did I feel so fraudulent, so foolish and stupid and wrong?

It could be that I was confronted with a version of my own grandiosity. Or it could be:

And I found this: I am just going to say what I found. The ramifications of the thing will be different for each of us but in the end this is the issue. What the grandiose mother, physically abusive or not, teaches that the good enough mother does not: Certainty. The grandiose mother is certain she is right.

The unquestionable belief that we are "fraudulent, foolish, stupid, wrong." That is what I meant. The fiery, certain truth in the contempt in the mother's eyes is what we have to fall back on instead of the good enough mom's belief we are all going to make it through, somehow.

The good enough mom doesn't know how, either; she is sure we will be okay. The grandiosity addicted mom knows, knew all along ("Well, I guess you weren't such a good mother after all, were you?") that we were incompetent, that our lives would fall apart; proof that we are after all, non-entities, not worth it, stupid

So now we know what we got. And, in learning good enough mom's response, we learn what we should have had, what we needed.

Good enough mom: "I don't know why this happened, honey. I know we will come through it. I know everything is going to be okay."

Good.

Now, we know what to tell ourselves and our own children.

At the heart of our confusion regarding what is happening with our kids is the same thing that was always at the heart of our mothering. Of my mothering, anyway. I knew what not to do. I did not know what to do.

Now, we sort of do: "I don't know why. But I love you and I know everything will be okay."

In addition, we know the flavor (again) of every interaction with our mothers. (To the degree your mothers were like mine.)

Contempt.

That's a really hard thing for a little kid to learn in her own mother's eyes.

How could we ever recover from that, from those things we were taught about ourselves as little babies, as children, as young women, as mothers.

As grandmothers: My mother at eighty, drawing back her arm as though to strike her now sixty year old daughter.

But here we are.

Doing it; coming through it. Seeing the wrongness in what the mother did and refuting the truths of those times, of all times.

Here is the difference in that remembrance, this morning. It has to do with D H comment regarding the tire rimming machine. Who appears to be the fool, here? I always thought it was me. It felt like popped back. It felt foolish and wrong and I didn't know what to say or think.

Now I know: Emotional flashback. (Thank you, Serenity.) I can name the feel of it. Now I know: Of course I could not know how to handle that occurrence. I was a guest in my mother's house. My granddaughters and my mother and me.

What kind of mother changes what that might have been into what it became.

Who is the fool, here.

***

They were waiting for us to fail, were determined we would fall, validating the legitimacy of those truths they taught with such certainty. As it is in every abusive situation, it was all about the abuser's truths and was never anything having to do with us. It was about contempt, and about the choice to hate.

And we were just little kids; we believed them.

Well. The more I try to clarify, the muddier the water gets.

In the reading I did yesterday, I saw the emotional tone of my mom and of my sister. I awakened this morning very sure that the theme is betrayal. Back to betrayal, and then, to self-betrayal, and of learning the taste of that and tracing its genesis and tracking it down.

Another level, then.

I feel stronger today than yesterday. Yesterday and the day before were hard days, all of it having to do with Christmas memories, and with the vulnerability of love, and with the senses of loss and regret.

And rejection.

The cruel, pointlessness of it.

Psychological homelessness.

Emotional homelessness; unanchored. Without emotional moorings.

Is that why the imagery of the ship? It's huge; it's beautiful, white and strong and full sailed or sleek and modern, the sound of it deep and true, the sea so beautifully, beautifully blue. The sun! The breeze gentle, and kind; the craft, beautifully balanced, moving well.

A dream.

The sound of it.

The storm yet to come.

And this morning, remembering to pray for their peace in the certain belief I will find peace for myself, there.

And that worked.

I have the Benedictines friended on my Facebook. Each day, there is a prayer. I've been writing them out in the morning, before I come here.

That is helping; so much more than you would think, that is helping.

I have Eckhart on my FB, too. This morning, his contribution is from pages 116-117 of New Earth. (His second book.) Power of Now is the first.

In that sense, there is nothing you can do to become free of ego. When that shift happens, which is the shift from thinking to awareness, an intelligence far greater than the ego's cleverness begins to operate in your life. Emotions and even thoughts, become depersonalized through awareness. Their impersonal nature is recognized. There is no longer a self in them. They are just human emotions, human thoughts. Your entire personal history, which is ultimately no more than a story, a bundle of thoughts and emotions, becomes of secondary importance and no longer occupies the forefront of your consciousness. It no longer forms the basis for your sense of identity. You are the light of Presence, the awareness that is prior to and deeper than any thoughts and emotions.

Yes.

And that's what I know, this morning. The prayer for those we hold anger against informs our thinking. It enables us to wish them well and let go instead of being stuck there in the hurt of betrayal. It makes a separation for us between the hurt of it and ourselves.

That is a very good practice.

Pray for their peace daily and there, find our own.

That is how we learn not to hate them for what they do.

That is how we forgive.

Pray for their peace daily and there, find our own.

:O)

***

On the drain tiles. Covered in mud, unsuspected springs bursting up out of nowhere at all, we should be finished with the drain tiles, today. Then, we are going to make a curved path through the yard and install lighting along it.

Lots of work, still.

We are physically stronger than we were when we began.

The apples are ripening.

There are so many hummingbirds! We are filling the feeder every day, now. Three cups of liquid. It hangs just outside the room where I am when I am online. As I write, there are three of them, swooping in to feed or hovering in place; there are more ~ too many to count ~ in the trees surrounding the house.

Tiny, gleaming bits of birdlife.

Well, anyway. That's my morning.

Plus coffee.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

We are so used to being gas-lighted.

Yes!

Cedar

 

[InsaneCdn]

The grandiosity addicted mom knows, knew all along ("Well, I guess you weren't such a good mother after all, were you?") that we were incompetent, that our lives would fall apart; proof that we are after all, non-entities, not worth it, stupid

Very well put, Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Dear Daughter, too?

Oh, yes. She gets so mad at us, too. I really believe now that what the kids need is to believe they can do this, can live their lives well. I was taught, not that good and bad things happen to all of us, but that bad things would happen because I deserved nothing; that every good thing was a mistake and would come to its end. It has been a rough few years for all of us. We have been there, have listened and tried really hard to speak words that will strengthen. This has been exactly right, I think Copa. Daughter has been able to mother her kids, to pull her family back together. We are not the place good things can happen from: She is.

She is doing impossible things.

We are not the good place son can come home to.

He is.

She still has so many problems with pain medications. She is coping, beating it, coming through it. We are so proud of that in her, Copa and Serenity. She tells me more than she tells D H. Where she has been in that history of addiction is horrendous. Fooling around with illicit stuff to begin with and then, addicted to prescription pain medications which can be withdrawn at the physician's whim; at the nurse's whim. It's a terrible trap to be in.

And she is doing it, and it's scary to see what happens when what there is isn't enough and there is nothing to do but get through it.

And she is doing it.

Wow.

We were all coping with that process during her visit and we did it. Gently, kindly, outraged or so filled with compassion.

We did it.

Son is coming around. I think he is not talking to me again, but I know that he will.

Both kids would have been here, living here, if we had not said: You can do this. I don't know how either, but I know that you will. I believe in you.

That is the response I couldn't make when I didn't believe in me. That certainty my mom hurt into me was all I knew. And I knew I didn't want to do that to my kids. Ever. What I didn't know is what I ~ is how to respond, when things go wrong, when I cannot trace back to how well it is going and take faith that I will handle this, too. That is what threw me when things were not going well for us. I was so sure I had done something wrong and that if I could just find it, I could address it. I could never believe that good things and bad things happen to all of us and that, unless we can see where we went wrong pretty easily, we didn't go wrong. Sifting through the past isn't going to help us, today.

I was raised to believe I did not deserve.

That is why I believed I had sneaked a self, sneaked a beautiful life, sneaked those beautiful kids. That is how I could believe it was right for me to lose them.

Just like I've been condemned and found wanting (one more time) by my betraying family of origin. That is the shame in it. That of course this would happen. (Looks like you weren't such a good mother after all, were you.)

So yes Copa, dear, dear daughter, too.

We were always strong enough, centered enough; enough. Good and bad things happen to us all. It is okay to make a mistake, to go a wrong way. It is okay to change our minds, change our paths. Nothing makes us losers; we just are. All of our lives, here we are.

Good enough mom.

I don't even have words to describe the freedom from guilt, the freedom to choose love, to be with through the good and the bad that is going to come to all of us instead of to be responsible for those things that aren't perfect.

To have my family or origin see us as they do feels like filth to me, today.

Pray for their peace; therein, find our own.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

So, I decided to channel Jimmy Carter.

I like the way Jimmy Carter is helping us all through the death of an icon. How kind of him, understanding his place in all of our consciousnesses, to prepare us for his death as he has.

I was thinking about that, this morning.

Good things, and bad things, and the sense and responsibility in how we interpret ourselves as we come through them.

But this is what I wanted to write for you, Copa.

The Benedictine entry I did not post about this morning had to do with the remembrance of a man, a priest, who was killed, back in the 1600s, for the nature of his beliefs. He died horribly at the hands of his own Church.

He was eighty.

Eighty, when they did what they did to him.

The point was that we are who we are, with all the good and the bad and with our abilities to choose, whatever our ages. That the physical is the vehicle, is the means of conveyance, of what is real.

Us.

Every one of us, whatever our stations or situations; whatever our betrayals or triumphs in the physical, what matters is the real thing that we are.

We all are coming face to face with the reality that our time here is not endless. We are seeing the way of things, of everything physical. I don't agree with this business of blaming the patient, of victimizing the addict and etc. Sometimes, D H and I try a new vitamin or something ~ here is an example. I have been reading "Cooked" by Michael Pollan. One section talks about fermentation. About whether our bodies are ours, or whether an alien species might classify us as carriers for the incredible number of microbes every living thing harbors. About how all that works. About how we think molds and bacterias are universally bad things when the reality is that it all works together. That when we take antibiotics, we are killing off the very things that keep the incredibly complex balance of life and health working.

So, I was telling D H about that.

And we said: That's it! We are going to ferment kim chee or sauerkraut or beer for the sakes of our intestinal microbes. Then? We say, like...no one dies in Korea, right?

Because neither of us likes kim chee.

And no matter how much kim chee they have eaten, and no matter how richly fermented, and with whatever microbes at work there...Koreans die, too.

So...maybe we will not eat that kim chee, then.

I love it that you said you would channel your inner Jimmy Carter. I will tell that one to D H tonight.

He is a sterling example of how to do this, of how to care for those we love while we admit and explore and accept.

Because it's a pretty scary thing.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

Cedar, before I address your posts I wanted to tell you that we are fermenting wine. We have a grape vine that we harvested. To the grapes we added water, sugar and champagne yeast. It is happily bubbling on my counter in a crock. My goal is to make the sweet wine I drank in Brasil. Vino Tinto Suave com Hiello aparte. Soft sweet red wine with ice on the side.

The thing that is making these health alerts more difficult is that they are coming on the heels of my mother's swift decline and death.

Did I not get a good enough lesson in mortality, to not really require that so soon I follow in her footsteps?

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

As the mother, yes. As the daughter, no.

Here's the question: Why should I accept who they say I am. Why should I not fight for the right to have a mother like everyone else I know has a mother?

Why should I accept her contempt, skulk away like a dog with her tail between her legs?

I am like, spitting mad about this. About this time and about the last time, and about the time that was twisted and wasted grieving over who they insist that I am.

roar

Pray for their peace; therein, find your own.

(Cedar prays fervently, slipping the occaisional "F you, f you, f you mom" in and hoping God doesn't notice.)

I feel like I am crazy with madness this morning.

Like Lieutenant Dan.

That is because I am seeing through my own eyes. And not through the eyes of my abusers.

Took long enough.

Pray for their peace; therein, find your own.

roar

I am still hung up. Because in the case of an estranged child, we have the parent and the kid. Each of them needing the other. To begin coming together there needs to be at least neutrality. Not acid. Not base. Neutrality. If each one keeps restating what has already been said, how is that not perpetuating a war?

I only know this about that, Copa. The kids do love us. What they want, what they need from us, is to know we love them. Whatever we say, if we can think through why we say it before we say it, if they know we love them, if they know we believe in them and respect them for the hardness of their battle (and it is hard ~ whatever they're going through (or, we are) and however it go to be what it is, the present is hard, and scary and they feel without options.

I love you; I mean it. I love you. That makes a place for each of us to love ourselves.

And then, we can do it.

We can stop doing the things that got us where we are.

That is triumph enough; that is courage enough. Our job, I think this is true but I don't know either, is to tell them they are right. They are between a rock and a hard place. We can tell them our stories, if they apply. Times we didn't think we could do it, but somehow, we did. We can tell them we want that for them; that we want them to know they can do it and if we continue to be the ones who can do it, they will never be able to know that they don't have to be afraid. They have everything they need, and more, because we love who they are and we are so glad they are ours and we know they can do this.

And whether they do or not, we will be there.

We will love them, and we will try to do the right thing by them.

We want to see them; we miss them.

I think this way because I did not have those things. I could be wrong in a million ways. But that's okay. I am good enough mom.

Not perfect; just human, like they are, too.

And good things and bad things happen to all of us, and we believe they are very strong, very good people.

I think that matters, Copa. We were so far into enabling that all of us forgot that true thing: Son and daughter are good, good people.

We are good people, too.

Good enough.

My son called 10 days or so ago. He stated this: I am going to the hospital today for blood work (this was a white flag.)

He needs me. He wants a relationship. He may or may not have gotten his blood work but he wants me.

Oh, Copa. I am proud and happy for you. He does want you. You are his mother. That is the thing we forget, when we interact with them though our worry, through our sure sense that they cannot make it unless they do it the way we say they must.

We forget that they love us.

Just that little, tiny, place of acceptance explodes into loving them, into cherishing the sound of their voices instead of that feeling of forcing them to do the right thing at the cost of our anger, our disgust with their choices. In a way, for me and for D H, for all of us I suppose, whose kids are so troubled and are in such danger ~ how can we possibly let go and just love them when they are harming themselves?!?

How can we do that.

I don't know.

We have to be good enough mom. I don't even know what they need, or what they need to do or how it feels, to be them.

But I do know that once I can see it that way, then whatever I've said from my mother heart is...good enough. Our kids know what they need to do. What they don't know is who they are in our hearts.

That is how it seems to me this morning.

Just like I wish for my mom and my sister to love me, they wish for me to love them, to respect the essence of who they are even if they are messing up big time. So, I get to say that. "You are messing up big time. I love you."

You know what else I do, whenever one of my people calls me, Copa and Serenity and everyone reading along? I thank them. I tell them I've been thinking about them and I am so glad they called me; called us.

Because that is true.

I think that's the right thing, the thing they need from me more than anything else. And I can so easily give that to them, can so easily tell them the true thing that I love them so much; more than anything in the world.

So, that would feel pretty good, I think.

If I were the child hearing that, I mean.

We are not them. Our families were not like theirs.

I know. I can't even hardly believe it! Our families were just awful people in their choices of how to see. They are still choosing to do that. Isn't that something. Who is the fool, here.

You know why I could never figure out the win for them in what they do, in how the are determined to do this?

There isn't one.

Literally, there is no winning position. Once they have whatever it is that they gain through right out in the open or through thinly disguised hatred (couched in religious grandiosity in my sister's case), they can never relax. They must be eternally sifting, assessing, condemning.

No win.

No trust.

I wish those terrible things never happened to you, Copa. You are amazing. You think you are weak because you've gone back to bed. I see you attending to business and going back to bed.

Stubbornly.

You are like the samurai warrior in the story. Refusing to accept who he named himself, he defiantly leaped into the community cesspool and, certain of where and who he was because he named himself the guy who chose cesspool over a lie, stayed there until, one moonlit night, the lotus was born.

Then he got out.

Life was good.

He was his own again.

It was a little like an "F you, mom" without the needlepoint.

Or a motorcycle.

:O)




Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

The fiery, certain truth in the contempt in the mother's eyes

I think this is the accusation I felt when my son started falling apart.

I was taught, not that good and bad things happen to all of us, but that bad things would happen because I deserved nothing; that every good thing was a mistake and would come to its end.

Yes, me too. And when my son came to as if accuse me that I deserved nothing from him, either, not his respect, or love or the reflected pride of being a good mother...I railed against this. How could I deserve nothing at all? Even what I had had with him? And the rage that I could not show to my mother, I hurled at him.

We had no basis of trust in anything. Not in others or in ourselves. Because even if we had accrued a track record of success, of agency, of responsibility...on the deepest level it was a mirage, built on the quicksand of doubt, fear and the sense we were not entitled. And it could all be taken away. And with our kids, it was.

I do not know how we come to begin to live lives from secure and sound footings. Especially as late in life as I am. I can only assume that it comes from the choice to do so. The permission by circumstances, and then the choice. As we do with our children:

We are not the place good things can happen from: She is.

We are not the good place son can come home to.

He is.

With me, I did not search for my wrong...I did not need to...I knew already that anything I had or was could be taken from me and would be.

I was so sure I had done something wrong and that if I could just find it, I could address it.

It was that wrong against me that I protested with my son. Because I too was raised this way:

I was raised to believe I did not deserve.

So, any unhappiness or failure to thrive on the part of my son became the accusation that I did not deserve anything:

instead of the good enough mom's belief we are all going to make it through, somehow

And what that is is both a failure of trust and a failure of faith.

Our inner worlds had been built upon defiance of a culture of poverty. There was nothing there, except that which could be covertly secreted, like that cookie I took in the house of my friend. Only our wits, whatever entry could be secured by prettiness or brightness or vitality. Street Arabs, are what the urchins in late 19th century were called.

There was not the confidence that there would be plenty. Or even more. Punishment was meted haphazardly without rhyme or reason.

And I had defied this culture of poverty, to achieve a life that I had built.

And when my son began to suffer, to turn against me, as if to accuse me, that I did not deserve him, after all, I could not hold faith that what we had together, a family, love, trust, could be, would be sustained.

And I became furious. Hysterical. Because this could not be so. It could not be.

So, I proceeded to dismantle by my own hands, the family, love and trust between us. If I had had faith, I could have withstood it. But I did not.

So, what we are creating here...is a way to transform doubt, fear, poverty of spirit into faith...trust...and the deep confidence that whatever happens...we can handle it and so can our children. A Jimmy Carter spirit.

 

[Copabanana]

Why should I not fight for the right to have a mother like everyone else I know has a mother?

You should. But it cannot be your own.

I know you have designated alternate mother figures, like Maya...I wonder what other practices we could each dedicate ourselves to, to reinforce and honor that mother within us, or seek it in our lives?

What they don't know is who they are in our hearts.

They know, Cedar.

Just that little, tiny, place of acceptance explodes into loving them, into cherishing the sound of their voices instead of that feeling of forcing them to do the right thing at the cost of our anger, our disgust with their choices.

Yes. That is what I was trying to get across these past few days. Finding that place. That neutral place. Because if we are in neutral, we are in that martial arts position where everything is possible, everything is ready. We can block. Or we can be present to the deepest, sweetest, strongest love in the world. (Forgive me, I know nothing about martial arts. But I believe in it.)

We have to be very careful to not keep fighting the war on the terrain of the culture of poverty we were taught.

 

[Copabanana]

Just like I've been condemned and found wanting (one more time) by my betraying family of origin. That is the shame in it. That of course this would happen.

we were incompetent, that our lives would fall apart; proof that we are after all, non-entities, not worth it, stupid

That state was always waiting there, latent. We know that now.

By the way, I called the psychiatrist yesterday and left a message that I wanted to stop. I told him if he wanted to we could speak one last time on Monday. He called back and said, of course he respected my desire to stop but believed we would be benefit from the opportunity for review in one last session. So Monday will be the last time.

I bring this up here because there is a default belief in me that I do not know. That I am stupid. That I cannot take care of myself. That I am lost.

I keep inviting M to solve things for me and he refuses. I think he fears that I will hold him responsible. He is correct.

Good enough mom: "I don't know why this happened, honey. I know we will come through it. I know everything is going to be okay."

Faith. Trust in what comes. Trust in oneself. Trust in each other. Commitment. Honor.

All of the things we lacked.

How could we ever recover from that, from those things we were taught about ourselves as little babies, as children, as young women, as mothers.

I want to believe that we can now. I do not know how, but I believe we will.

When that shift happens, which is the shift from thinking to awareness, an intelligence far greater than the ego's cleverness begins to operate in your life.

This is what I am getting at. The space we can aspire to with our children...and our lives.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

So, Cedar, are you saying we need to have these relationships, even if they are this way? I don't mind if you think so. This is not an interrogation I am just curious.

Oh, no, Serenity. I am saying that instead of the love or joy or befuddled frustration I see in the eyes of friends, or of D H family, when they speak of their mothers, all I ever feel, all I have ever felt, as the tide turned and my mother was in a position to require a daughter's care and concern, was responsibility.

Responsibility.

Not joy, not that rich fullness that comes when someone we love is completing their time with us.

Responsibility.

Whatever D H would say, however angry he would become, I called my mother every night at 7:30 and talked with her as long as she wished and about anything she wished. I did not want her to face the evening alone. I wanted her to know I would call at that time, every night. She would be in bed, all tucked in, and we would talk about anything at all.

When D H would be so furious that I placed that call to my mother above anything else, I did not give an inch. But the word I replied to D H with was: responsibility.

Not love. Not joy.

My duty, as I saw it to be and was determined to carry it out.

D H would say: You don't even speak to her more than twice during the entire time she is with your sister. You cannot get through; she does not call you.

Why are you taking our time together to call her now, every stinking night, for two hours or more?

Responsibility.

He would say: Well go spend the night with her, then.

And I would be like, "Well, heck no."

And when I did spend the night with my mother? We had so little to say to one another, and the time was so tense. Face to face calls old truths.

That is what I meant, Serenity.

Responsibility; not joy.

How sad is that.

I feel guilty that this is so.

I wish I were stronger, better, were able to defy what it is and make of it what I want. But I know better than to let down my guard.

Not with my mother, and not with my sister. And, so said D H last night, not with my brother, either. D H said: What your brother has done is worse. He threw you over knowing you had gone to battle for him. He is a man. You are his sister.

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

Huh.

So, I am thinking about that aspect of things. I am remembering a comment Lil's Jabber made, about his own sisters.

D H is right.

That is how a man protects.

How a man protects ~ that is how he loves.

My brother does not love me, either.

Darn it.

When we were in therapy one time for daughter, that was the source of D H pain: That he could not protect.

That is how a man loves.

D H said something else too, the other night. We were listening to Donald T. And D H said: "Yes. Women are to be cherished. That is what they mean, to us. They are these amazingly human things with all kinds of softness and prettiness and deep emotional currents and they make life so rich a thing. Just to wake up in the morning with a woman creates a whole different kind of day. Just because you woke up next to a woman you love."

So here is a funny story.

I always go to bed before D H. So, he comes in and was kissing me goodnight but I was already mostly asleep. So, the next day I was teasing him about that because we do that. We tease each other about how it feels to be so married, and so aging. And D H was like, "So what? I always kiss you and etc. Then? He says: "Whatever Cedar. It was dark in there. I thought you were the dog."

Ha!

And the dog does sleep right between us.

So, there you go.

:O)

Maybe I feel less passionate about DNA than most people. Ok, she gave birth to me. I know that. But what does that really mean when she never loved me? What did I owe her when she took every single thing I did and made it a bad thing? I did try. While she was alive, I was still trying to solve every ill between us because of my spiritual beliefs. I realize now that not everything is meant to be rectified in this lifetime. (Nonsense to you, I know, but it motivated a lot of my trying).

Not nonsense, Serenity. You are exactly right. You had to do that because you have integrity. It was your responsibility. So, you did the right thing. Whatever her response, however painful to you. You did the right thing.

To do the right thing in the face of a mother's and a sister's determination to hate, whatever the cost to ourselves, that is integrity.

Turns out we have that quality, that quality of integrity, in spades.

Maybe, that is what they hate in us.

But when he moved so far away and we basically lost touch as I went through my divorce and my life changed, we no longer kept up.

Like my brother did Serenity, your brother betrayed you, too. I keep bringing Jabber into this. I think he would never allow his sisters to be denigrated, or to allow his relationship with them to lapse. I do not think he would switch with the prevailing winds regarding his relationship to them.

My brother did.

So did yours. (Maybe. That is what it seems like to me. Another betrayal, at the witch mother's behest. And our brothers, our very own brothers, did not defend us.)

Oh, for heaven's sake. I am mad, again. "Pray for their peace and therein, find our own."

roar

I am down home and simple and if I look ok it is an accident, not because I try.

I cherish that about you. When I am stronger, I will be that way, too.

I am forever battling "That'll do, pig." Ugly in the mirror; taught that was the value that mattered. The way I look pleased my mother. It pleases me too, except that I am so often ugly.

Which can ruin my day.

Circle.

I think we all see it the same--there is no obligation.

There is no obligation because of who they insist we be. That is what I kept tripping over. How could I not do my part to create family? How is turning away, how is posting such rotten things about them ~ how could all this possibly be the right thing?

Because it is true, that's why.

It was never that they saw me the way they do through some fault of mine. Had I been less who I am? Had either of you been less than you are?

Chances are pretty good they would have been able to accept us then, boy.

But we are who we are, instead. We seem to function on integrity. What is the right thing. What is the responsible thing. My feelings don't matter. To do the right thing. That is what matters.

We all have done the right thing by our families of origin and been kicked squarely in the teeth for it, every time.

The difference for us now (for me, now) is that I see both them and myself through my own eyes and not through theirs.

How sad is that; but how incredible a thing, at last, to know.

Whether they choose to see as they do because they were raised to it, or whether they choose to see as they do because that is how they found some sense of self and identity as kids (through identifying with the mother and through hating pseudo mom), they are making a clear choice, now.

And it does not leave me thinking well of them.

It's like I posted when I was beginning to see my sister differently: I no longer believe in her. But the thing is, back when I believed that of course everyone wanted to create family, I had to believe in her in a future sense because her behavior in the past and the present was like, reprehensible.

Serenity. I read so much yesterday about estrangement and mothers and sisters and daughters. The very things your sister has done to you were listed as possibilities if the sibling was actually someone who could be a real, physical danger. The stalking. The police. The venomous insistence on mental illness in its worst forms.

All of it was there, Serenity.

You are correct in putting any hope of relationship with this sister away for good.

She is even more destructive than my sister, or Copa's.

And you are such a sweet, beautiful woman.

Maybe, our sisters just got our mom's genetics. But I still think there are choices being made, here.

I was thinking about my sister walking with the Lord in righteousness regarding her relationship to me. In a way, it's like your sister calling the police. Just like the policeman came to like you very much and even, shared his stories of mentally ill relatives with you...maybe the Lord is like, looking at my sister going, "What?!?"

Oh for heaven's sake. I am mad again. Pray for their peace and therein find your own.

Better, now.

That is a stellar thing to know, that little prayer. It acknowledges my own vulnerability, and my powerlessness over all of it.

There is no rule book for what responsibility we have, if any, to other people. For me, I feel responsible only for those who are kind to me. This is a new way of thinking, but it works for me.

It is a very correct way of thinking, and speaks to your innate integrity. To the person you are and always were, though, like me, and like Copa too, you were raised in an environment where integrity was not even on the radar.

Not even on the radar.

Isn't that a strange thing. To think about having grown up in a place like that.

No wonder I felt like that little girl in the bee costume, once I finally found the Benedictines.

Cedar

That's all they're saying, really. What is the right thing.

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Cedar, before I address your posts I wanted to tell you that we are fermenting wine. We have a grape vine that we harvested. To the grapes we added water, sugar and champagne yeast. It is happily bubbling on my counter in a crock. My goal is to make the sweet wine I drank in Brasil. Vino Tinto Suave com Hiello aparte. Soft sweet red wine with ice on the side.

D H makes choke cherry wine in the Fall, Copa. Last year's batch was just awful. (And it could not possibly have been lack of fermentation, because it smelled up the whole house, for awhile there.) He wasn't going to do it, this year. I will tell him this story of your wine.

I don't know whether the choke cherries are gone past their time yet, or not.

We picked them one year with both granddaughters and made choke cherry jam.

That was awful, too.

It was so much fun to do it, though. Pick the berries, I mean. Make the jam. Realize it was really awful.

:O)


Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

When M has a neutral expression I think he is mad at me. I get scared. For the last year or so he has begun sticking his tongue out at me when I look at him. I have never asked him why, but I find it immeasurably reassuring. I can relax and know he is not mad.

I love this for you, Copa.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

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

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

Most everybody can choose. That is the gift of being human. We define ourselves by our choices. Imagine that.

Imagine using the one gift we have in life, choosing, to do wrong, to be weak or small.

We do that I think because we are operating from a zero sum game, a culture of poverty, where there is only so much to go around. Like zero. We believe that it is either us or them. And we descend to a level below mammals to grasp and ingest like reptiles. Without consciousness.

Turns out we have that quality, that quality of integrity, in spades.
I
Maybe, that is what they hate in us.

I think this is true. And I wonder why.

Greater strength and flexibility? Access to intelligence? Constancy to self? Power? Do they want to break us? Humiliate us? Humble us? Rub our faces in our temerity and resilience to think we deserve integrity instead of humiliation? To think we might be mammals and not reptiles, like them?

Imagine living as they do? I know my sister feels she is a big cheese. She was long a sponsor in AA. She really bought her story of redemption.

Gloried that she was an esteemed professor, a MOTHER, a matriarch, with all of her things that corruption bought. Does she know inside her self that she is corrupt?

If we look at it like this, it becomes clear that there is no way for a person of integrity that aspires to transcend her beginnings, can accommodate to a worldview...of seize and ingest.

"Whatever Cedar. It was dark in there. I thought you were the dog."

Ha!

Funny.