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Family of Origin
Surviving parent, whom I love, sad that his kids are estranged
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<blockquote data-quote="Scent of Cedar *" data-source="post: 676106" data-attributes="member: 17461"><p>Ha! Copa, you are so funny. I love it when we can laugh in these serious matters too. And I liked the part about the French King, and farting in their general direction.</p><p></p><p>Funny. <em>But so chillingly true.</em></p><p></p><p><em>About the lady you trained? That is <u>exactly</u> how they do it. Compliments should never be taken lightly. </em></p><p></p><p><em>Ever.</em></p><p></p><p><em></em></p><p><em></em></p><p>To me, this seems like: Your first refusal will not stand, does not bother me, and changes nothing. </p><p></p><p>The issue of money has been reopened.</p><p></p><p>Why Copa, would you feel "pressure" around refusing to fund someone who is behaving in ways similar to your son when you have refused to fund him.</p><p></p><p>What would be an appropriate response to this woman, should the issue be reopened? In a saner world, the issue will not come up again. But if it does, and if whatever this woman construes as "pressure" is pressed just a little harder, what would be an excellent response?</p><p></p><p>It will not be anger, Copa. It will not be whether she is or is not dirty or even, whether you do or do not want her in your home and have her there only because you love M and she is of his family.</p><p></p><p>What is an appropriate response.</p><p></p><p>"What do you mean?"</p><p></p><p>That is the appropriate response. Make her go naked.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>But I am feeling especially, wickedly awake myself today, so I could be misinterpreting the perfectly innocent remark of someone who has been told once that you will not succumb to blackmail.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I have seen people like that when I worked too, Copa. The reputations of those they destroyed, their meteoric rises in their careers, the bodies left behind them ~ all of it, as you describe. </p><p></p><p>Two people like that I have seen in my professional life.</p><p></p><p>There is no way to fight them. They are single-minded in their purpose. They know exactly when to stop, when to back down, when it is safe to attack again. Eventually, they are fired. It always happens that way from what I have seen. But until they are fired, their rises are unexplainably meteoric. The lives they destroy on their ways to "the top" are still destroyed.</p><p></p><p>And no one can really say why.</p><p></p><p>And that is how we know when a predator is in the vicinity.</p><p></p><p>The desecrated corpses of persons once respected.</p><p></p><p>It is the same scenario that plays out in our families of origin.</p><p></p><p>"<em>What would Cedar do?"</em></p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>My mother (and my sister) created a paradigm in which each was better than she is, and my sister got what she wanted and in a way, so did my mother. It is difficult to ascertain who manipulated who with what, here. I have posted before about my sister having believed herself "duped" when she learned my mother had seen the man behind my sister's back. And about my sister's outrageous, connect-the-dots belief that I too would feel duped when no one had been talking to me for almost a year by that time.</p><p></p><p>For heaven's sake!!!</p><p></p><p>It was in that conversation that I first said, "Why are you calling me." And I meant it. And I really did not know. I was trying to pt the pieces into some coherent order <em>and there was no coherent order. </em>I am more familiar with their natures and tenacity, and with the stupid pointlessness of their ugliness, now.</p><p></p><p>Where was I going with this.</p><p></p><p>Oh. What are they saying. I don't know! I don't know why they do what they do. For once, Cedar is speechless for the thousandth time.</p><p></p><p>Which means we are in denial, again. Cedar, as is all too well known, is struck speechy, not speechless.</p><p></p><p>Which is a very true joke.</p><p></p><p>This is my guess: It was my mother who pursued the man, initially. They had known one another in high school. She found him online. Whether innocently or not, my mother's initial intent may have been only to create relationship. But...my sister and what happened during the following years plays into this, too. The man became the point of contention, maybe. The one place my mother did not have to compromise to have what my sister was willing to give her because the man was happily willing to give her more.</p><p></p><p>My advice to my mother was to marry the man. Of course. She would have lived a very different life than the one she is living now. She would have traveled. She would have lived among a very large, tightly knit family. With huge family dinners and amazingly good food, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as the man was the patriarch of a very large, loving family.</p><p></p><p>Everything about our own family would have been different than it is, had my mother married the man. The "loser" in that healthier family which may have been created, had my mother married the man, would have been my sister. In the sense that she would not have the all of it and more that she has, now. But every other member of my family of origin would have been blessed by this man's influence, and by the influence of his large and honorable (and very well connected) family.</p><p></p><p>Which is why my sister hated him, and waged (what now appears, in retrospect, to have been) an incredible campaign against him.</p><p></p><p>So I don't know the answer, Copa. I only know there are people like that in the world. I know that we sense it, but that we override our own hackles rising because we are well mannered, and because these duplicitous types, mimicking real human generosity of spirit, present themselves as genuinely human when they are not.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>They say Copa did you know, that if a murderer comes to our door and knocks, social conditioning decrees that he could not possibly be there to murder us or he would not have knocked.</p><p></p><p>And so, we will, most of us, let the murderer in.</p><p></p><p>That is how these people swim through the world just beneath the radar. They are not even ethical in their criminality. They are definitely there to do us in, they are fully aware of their intentions in targeting their victims, but they knock politely first, so we will feel that we must welcome them. </p><p></p><p>It is like Maya says: Believe them the first time they tell you who they are. We are not going to hurt them by pointing these things out to them because they already know who they are, through and through. </p><p></p><p>They are not fully human.</p><p></p><p>Nor do I believe they can change.</p><p></p><p>But here is the thing: We are destroyed ~ some essential something in us is destroyed, either way, when we are dealing with people like that. If we do not open the door, we will come to live small lives defined by fear. (Like Howard Hughes, with our nails grown over-long and our hearts broken. Because the reality is that, compared to them, we are all impossibly wealthy in the way Howard Hughes was impossibly wealthy. In our undeniable generosity of spirit. In our good humor. In the love we give and in the wealth of the Sleeping Beauty kisses we have received, again and again and again.) </p><p></p><p>If we do open the door, we will die.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I think they do not think that way, Copa. <em>They are not like us. Nothing they do is about us. They move from victim to victim because ~ I don't know why. Maybe, they are cold, in their hearts, where we are warm. They probably wonder why everyone around them is forever turning up dead or destroyed and feel badly for themselves about that.</em></p><p></p><p>The ultimate predator imagery would be Ghengis Khan, hawking and spitting into his General's open mouths.</p><p></p><p>And he really did that.</p><p></p><p>And believed himself the Scourge of God.</p><p></p><p>No guilt. Pity aplenty, but no concept of Mercy.</p><p></p><p>That is how we learned not to extend the concept of Mercy to ourselves, Copa and everyone.</p><p></p><p>How awfully sad for those little girls (or little boys) that we were.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I am beginning to believe that to be shunned is an honor, Copa. Those who shun are willfully employing a technique they absolutely believe will unravel the tenderest victim, and will deeply hurt the stronger victim. But they do it anyway. If we are being shunned...what kind of person is it who would knowingly engage in such behaviors? </p><p></p><p>Evil would be as good a description as a multi-syllabic diagnostic title which pretty much says: This person is majorly f***** up. </p><p></p><p>Run.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Generosity and laughter are intrinsic to "human". These people are neither generous ~ though they will give ostentatiously when it is in their interests to do so, and will proclaim their generosity to the heavens. Nor do they laugh with full, rich-throated laughter. They are incapable. They do laugh, of course. In fact, they laugh all the time. </p><p></p><p>It's just that their humor will have to do with ridicule.</p><p></p><p>And will slide toward victimization.</p><p></p><p>Every time.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>They only kill them off socially if there is anything left of them. <em>Which means they are losing.</em> So, when we are being shunned and then, on top of that, seeing our reputations further destroyed in an ever-widening circle, I suppose we should take a minute to pat ourselves on the back.</p><p></p><p>For sure, no one else is going to.</p><p></p><p>The predator always shows his or her true nature. They are like simple, one-celled organisms in a way. Their repertoires of behavior are stupidly the same ones I think, all of their lives.</p><p></p><p>That is why they must move on.</p><p></p><p>Eventually there is no one left who will have anything to do with them.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Maybe that is the lesson about Joseph, Copa. There is nothing real they can do. They can destroy us, but not touch us. They can never be us. That is why vengeance would be an oxymoron where the brothers who had enslaved and sold Joseph's birthright and whatever else they did to him <em>with the father's knowing complicity</em> were concerned.</p><p></p><p>They were not human to start with.</p><p></p><p>Even their fear that Joseph was such that he would take vengeance was insulting.</p><p></p><p>You have taught us so much with The Story of Joseph, Copa.</p><p></p><p>Or Jacob. I am forever becoming confused between Jacob and Joseph. Joseph had The Coat of Many Colors. Jacob smote the angel on the thigh.</p><p></p><p>Both were human.</p><p></p><p>Like us.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p><u>Yes</u>, a form of shunning. I had not seen it like that before, Copa. You are right, exactly right.</p><p></p><p>They never, ever, stop.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>I am sorry Copa, and I know that was your sister and you love her. I still love my stupid sister and I know better but I still do, too. Roar, and etc about that. But your sister had sucked the mother dry and put her in a home, Copa.</p><p></p><p>The sister was done with the mother; had decided to move on.</p><p></p><p>So, she did.</p><p></p><p><em>She would have done so whether you moved home or not. She would have preferred that there be no witnesses.</em></p><p></p><p><em>When your mother called you to protect her, she knew you would come; she knew you would protect her; that you would behave with integrity. What I am not sure of is whether she knew what it would cost you.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>I am sorry, Copa.</em></p><p><em></em></p><p><em>But I think she knew. </em></p><p></p><p>These people do not think like we do, Copa.</p><p></p><p>They are <u>nothing</u> like us.</p><p></p><p></p><p></p><p>One does not. The scent is the scent of live and loving human. It is intrinsic to living beings. We all sense it; we may even sense more than the predator. The problem here is that we do not believe in evil.</p><p></p><p>So, it waltzes in. </p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>There is no defense. In that each of the sisters seems to have gone to the trouble of eliciting allies from extended family, I think there may be no escaping their corrupting influence, either. But they do not win unless we collude with them in our own destruction. "It is what it is." is a good phrase to remember. Recognize when we have been victimized and admit to ourselves that is what happened and go on.</p><p></p><p>There is nothing else to do.</p><p></p><p>Everyone is targeted by a predator sooner or later, and usually more than once.</p><p></p><p>The difference between us and people who are not targeted so frequently is that, where such people feel dangerous to others <em>they feel familiar to us</em>.</p><p></p><p>Part of this process will be to accurately remember what really happened. Write it down. Do not color in the blanks for them with kind interpretation. They did do what it looks like they did, and they meant to do it. Stand back. Watch them manipulate you. Watch for it. It will happen. The last time I spoke on the phone with my sister, she went through a gamut of manipulatory defenses to my coldness, to my ten thousand whatever it was all meaning basically that she was wonderful and I was being a poop. </p><p></p><p>Knowing she would do that strengthened me against them.</p><p></p><p>***</p><p></p><p>Just write down the words they say. Initially, you will not understand them. Initially, you will find yourself reinterpreting for them what they must have meant. </p><p></p><p>Don't do that.</p><p></p><p>Or maybe, we are wrong about everything we think we see. But there are such people in the world. They do exist. We have all had dealings with them in one guise or another: The result is always the same. A sense of fearsome surprise, of dirtiness and hurt and betrayal that we don't really believe happened except that we are bleeding, again; a sense of something gone badly wrong, but with no clear sense of how it happened, of how it came to be.</p><p></p><p>The predator will have a pre-rehearsed rationale for how awful we are and how they never once saw it coming. If they are very clever (and they are) we will be left trying to figure out why we are such terrible, cheap imitations of people.</p><p></p><p>They will lie right to our faces.</p><p></p><p>This is why it is good to have things in writing.</p><p></p><p>It still sucks to have been taken by a predator, though.</p><p></p><p>Cedar</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Scent of Cedar *, post: 676106, member: 17461"] Ha! Copa, you are so funny. I love it when we can laugh in these serious matters too. And I liked the part about the French King, and farting in their general direction. Funny. [I]But so chillingly true.[/I] [I]About the lady you trained? That is [U]exactly[/U] how they do it. Compliments should never be taken lightly. [/I] [I]Ever.[/I] [I] [/I] To me, this seems like: Your first refusal will not stand, does not bother me, and changes nothing. The issue of money has been reopened. Why Copa, would you feel "pressure" around refusing to fund someone who is behaving in ways similar to your son when you have refused to fund him. What would be an appropriate response to this woman, should the issue be reopened? In a saner world, the issue will not come up again. But if it does, and if whatever this woman construes as "pressure" is pressed just a little harder, what would be an excellent response? It will not be anger, Copa. It will not be whether she is or is not dirty or even, whether you do or do not want her in your home and have her there only because you love M and she is of his family. What is an appropriate response. "What do you mean?" That is the appropriate response. Make her go naked. *** But I am feeling especially, wickedly awake myself today, so I could be misinterpreting the perfectly innocent remark of someone who has been told once that you will not succumb to blackmail. I have seen people like that when I worked too, Copa. The reputations of those they destroyed, their meteoric rises in their careers, the bodies left behind them ~ all of it, as you describe. Two people like that I have seen in my professional life. There is no way to fight them. They are single-minded in their purpose. They know exactly when to stop, when to back down, when it is safe to attack again. Eventually, they are fired. It always happens that way from what I have seen. But until they are fired, their rises are unexplainably meteoric. The lives they destroy on their ways to "the top" are still destroyed. And no one can really say why. And that is how we know when a predator is in the vicinity. The desecrated corpses of persons once respected. It is the same scenario that plays out in our families of origin. "[I]What would Cedar do?"[/I] My mother (and my sister) created a paradigm in which each was better than she is, and my sister got what she wanted and in a way, so did my mother. It is difficult to ascertain who manipulated who with what, here. I have posted before about my sister having believed herself "duped" when she learned my mother had seen the man behind my sister's back. And about my sister's outrageous, connect-the-dots belief that I too would feel duped when no one had been talking to me for almost a year by that time. For heaven's sake!!! It was in that conversation that I first said, "Why are you calling me." And I meant it. And I really did not know. I was trying to pt the pieces into some coherent order [I]and there was no coherent order. [/I]I am more familiar with their natures and tenacity, and with the stupid pointlessness of their ugliness, now. Where was I going with this. Oh. What are they saying. I don't know! I don't know why they do what they do. For once, Cedar is speechless for the thousandth time. Which means we are in denial, again. Cedar, as is all too well known, is struck speechy, not speechless. Which is a very true joke. This is my guess: It was my mother who pursued the man, initially. They had known one another in high school. She found him online. Whether innocently or not, my mother's initial intent may have been only to create relationship. But...my sister and what happened during the following years plays into this, too. The man became the point of contention, maybe. The one place my mother did not have to compromise to have what my sister was willing to give her because the man was happily willing to give her more. My advice to my mother was to marry the man. Of course. She would have lived a very different life than the one she is living now. She would have traveled. She would have lived among a very large, tightly knit family. With huge family dinners and amazingly good food, and grandchildren and great-grandchildren, as the man was the patriarch of a very large, loving family. Everything about our own family would have been different than it is, had my mother married the man. The "loser" in that healthier family which may have been created, had my mother married the man, would have been my sister. In the sense that she would not have the all of it and more that she has, now. But every other member of my family of origin would have been blessed by this man's influence, and by the influence of his large and honorable (and very well connected) family. Which is why my sister hated him, and waged (what now appears, in retrospect, to have been) an incredible campaign against him. So I don't know the answer, Copa. I only know there are people like that in the world. I know that we sense it, but that we override our own hackles rising because we are well mannered, and because these duplicitous types, mimicking real human generosity of spirit, present themselves as genuinely human when they are not. *** They say Copa did you know, that if a murderer comes to our door and knocks, social conditioning decrees that he could not possibly be there to murder us or he would not have knocked. And so, we will, most of us, let the murderer in. That is how these people swim through the world just beneath the radar. They are not even ethical in their criminality. They are definitely there to do us in, they are fully aware of their intentions in targeting their victims, but they knock politely first, so we will feel that we must welcome them. It is like Maya says: Believe them the first time they tell you who they are. We are not going to hurt them by pointing these things out to them because they already know who they are, through and through. They are not fully human. Nor do I believe they can change. But here is the thing: We are destroyed ~ some essential something in us is destroyed, either way, when we are dealing with people like that. If we do not open the door, we will come to live small lives defined by fear. (Like Howard Hughes, with our nails grown over-long and our hearts broken. Because the reality is that, compared to them, we are all impossibly wealthy in the way Howard Hughes was impossibly wealthy. In our undeniable generosity of spirit. In our good humor. In the love we give and in the wealth of the Sleeping Beauty kisses we have received, again and again and again.) If we do open the door, we will die. I think they do not think that way, Copa. [I]They are not like us. Nothing they do is about us. They move from victim to victim because ~ I don't know why. Maybe, they are cold, in their hearts, where we are warm. They probably wonder why everyone around them is forever turning up dead or destroyed and feel badly for themselves about that.[/I] The ultimate predator imagery would be Ghengis Khan, hawking and spitting into his General's open mouths. And he really did that. And believed himself the Scourge of God. No guilt. Pity aplenty, but no concept of Mercy. That is how we learned not to extend the concept of Mercy to ourselves, Copa and everyone. How awfully sad for those little girls (or little boys) that we were. I am beginning to believe that to be shunned is an honor, Copa. Those who shun are willfully employing a technique they absolutely believe will unravel the tenderest victim, and will deeply hurt the stronger victim. But they do it anyway. If we are being shunned...what kind of person is it who would knowingly engage in such behaviors? Evil would be as good a description as a multi-syllabic diagnostic title which pretty much says: This person is majorly f***** up. Run. *** Generosity and laughter are intrinsic to "human". These people are neither generous ~ though they will give ostentatiously when it is in their interests to do so, and will proclaim their generosity to the heavens. Nor do they laugh with full, rich-throated laughter. They are incapable. They do laugh, of course. In fact, they laugh all the time. It's just that their humor will have to do with ridicule. And will slide toward victimization. Every time. They only kill them off socially if there is anything left of them. [I]Which means they are losing.[/I] So, when we are being shunned and then, on top of that, seeing our reputations further destroyed in an ever-widening circle, I suppose we should take a minute to pat ourselves on the back. For sure, no one else is going to. The predator always shows his or her true nature. They are like simple, one-celled organisms in a way. Their repertoires of behavior are stupidly the same ones I think, all of their lives. That is why they must move on. Eventually there is no one left who will have anything to do with them. *** Maybe that is the lesson about Joseph, Copa. There is nothing real they can do. They can destroy us, but not touch us. They can never be us. That is why vengeance would be an oxymoron where the brothers who had enslaved and sold Joseph's birthright and whatever else they did to him [I]with the father's knowing complicity[/I] were concerned. They were not human to start with. Even their fear that Joseph was such that he would take vengeance was insulting. You have taught us so much with The Story of Joseph, Copa. Or Jacob. I am forever becoming confused between Jacob and Joseph. Joseph had The Coat of Many Colors. Jacob smote the angel on the thigh. Both were human. Like us. [U]Yes[/U], a form of shunning. I had not seen it like that before, Copa. You are right, exactly right. They never, ever, stop. I am sorry Copa, and I know that was your sister and you love her. I still love my stupid sister and I know better but I still do, too. Roar, and etc about that. But your sister had sucked the mother dry and put her in a home, Copa. The sister was done with the mother; had decided to move on. So, she did. [I]She would have done so whether you moved home or not. She would have preferred that there be no witnesses.[/I] [I]When your mother called you to protect her, she knew you would come; she knew you would protect her; that you would behave with integrity. What I am not sure of is whether she knew what it would cost you. I am sorry, Copa. But I think she knew. [/I] These people do not think like we do, Copa. They are [U]nothing[/U] like us. One does not. The scent is the scent of live and loving human. It is intrinsic to living beings. We all sense it; we may even sense more than the predator. The problem here is that we do not believe in evil. So, it waltzes in. *** There is no defense. In that each of the sisters seems to have gone to the trouble of eliciting allies from extended family, I think there may be no escaping their corrupting influence, either. But they do not win unless we collude with them in our own destruction. "It is what it is." is a good phrase to remember. Recognize when we have been victimized and admit to ourselves that is what happened and go on. There is nothing else to do. Everyone is targeted by a predator sooner or later, and usually more than once. The difference between us and people who are not targeted so frequently is that, where such people feel dangerous to others [I]they feel familiar to us[/I]. Part of this process will be to accurately remember what really happened. Write it down. Do not color in the blanks for them with kind interpretation. They did do what it looks like they did, and they meant to do it. Stand back. Watch them manipulate you. Watch for it. It will happen. The last time I spoke on the phone with my sister, she went through a gamut of manipulatory defenses to my coldness, to my ten thousand whatever it was all meaning basically that she was wonderful and I was being a poop. Knowing she would do that strengthened me against them. *** Just write down the words they say. Initially, you will not understand them. Initially, you will find yourself reinterpreting for them what they must have meant. Don't do that. Or maybe, we are wrong about everything we think we see. But there are such people in the world. They do exist. We have all had dealings with them in one guise or another: The result is always the same. A sense of fearsome surprise, of dirtiness and hurt and betrayal that we don't really believe happened except that we are bleeding, again; a sense of something gone badly wrong, but with no clear sense of how it happened, of how it came to be. The predator will have a pre-rehearsed rationale for how awful we are and how they never once saw it coming. If they are very clever (and they are) we will be left trying to figure out why we are such terrible, cheap imitations of people. They will lie right to our faces. This is why it is good to have things in writing. It still sucks to have been taken by a predator, though. Cedar [/QUOTE]
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