The win was that she was my mother and it hurt me that she did not love me. And she would show me this to the grave.
I don't want to give anyone the "you're in my head" win anymore.
"...and it hurt me that she did not love me."
Is it that these were people who did not love us, or is it that our mothers were women who could not love anyone?
I think my mother (and my sister) cannot love. That is why we were so blown away by the wonder of that Sleeping Beauty kiss, or of caring for our roses, thorns and all.
We had no way of knowing that intensity of feeling existed, the way we felt about our lives with our children.
What puzzles me is this: what gives one child the courage to think for herself? And why if she does, would this absolute sense of worthlessness persist? I think I am struggling with both a sense of my lack of worth, deep inside myself, as well as a related guilt about what I have.
I don't know Copa,
but I feel the same way. As we have worked here on FOO Chronicles, I have come into possession of my own home, of my own husband and my own dog and cat and the weather and of a kind of permission to savor the taste of my life as my own. I have been naming this real versus role in my posting here. Real feels so color filled, and so flavorful and rich. I am thinking these changes have to do with having resolved to be kinder to myself; with confronting the negative tapes with nothing stronger than that one, small wish for myself: kinder.
Because the resolution to be kinder was such a gentle thing, I have learned to treat myself gently. Over time,
coupled with being away from my Family of Origin and with our work we do here on FOO Chronicles, I have come to value ~ I don't know. Everything seems to have changed and it has to do with the Benedictines and the Buddhists and with finding Germany. I am beginning to have a concept of Germany which has to do with external, as well as internal, change. Germany will be ethically to reclaim internal locus of control in the sense of creating something new in the world. Always before in my life, the place I was most content and the value I was most in service to was the home. Was the emotional feel of a thing; was peace and happiness as the primary value however hard I worked to achieve it.
And I did work very hard for that.
That heart of the home sense of things is changing.
Of course I still want things run well at home. But I am thinking of other things now than the way the sun fills a room in the morning, or filling a particular room or garden area with white lights to make it beautiful at night.
I actually did those things, and loved doing them, and thought all the time about the emotional tone of our living spaces.
Now, I have a sense of picking up, of seeing differently and space for change. Maybe that is the way to say it: Roominess and breath and space, this time feels like. Here is an example: When I regret the things lost now, I know the kids will come through it. Before, and still a little bit now, I would feel my heart close in fear and rage and I would suffer for the way things happened. I would recommit to finding the way to help us all to be that family we were meant to be.
Now, the difference seems to be that I welcome and embrace and am invested in the family we are. I am thinking I could even say names of diagnoses without tumbling into horrified believing or roaring into angrily disbelieving.
We are not going to test that one just yet.
:O)
***
It has to do with combating the negatives with that gentleness that was kindness to self, and it has also to do with trust, these changes. I think it has to do with being away from my Family of Origin ~ all of them, my sister (who, as I come more and more out of denial, may have been the most hurtful of all of my relatives because I trusted her to love me the way I love her and she does not) included ~ long enough to recognize contempt masquerading as concern and hatred masquerading as love.
Though we seem to have been able to love (Copa's Sleeping Beauty kiss; the rose and its thorns and everything having to do with The Little Prince) we seem not able to extend those mercies to ourselves.
That is what is changing for me.
This summer, it will be two years since I have spoken to my mother or to my brother. It will be one year since I have spoken to my sister. It has been since my father's death almost seven years ago now, that Family of Origin dysfunction went skyrocketing into the stratosphere with my mother's ascension to the power position of elderly lonely widowed matriarch.
My mother was extended every mercy; every honor. We (I did, for sure) chose to believe the lies she told were how she truly believed things had happened and not that she was lying to destroy us all. But she did lie to destroy us all. I had such a hard time believing this could be true, but then, I read about your families.
You cannot know how grateful I am that you shared true and painful things with me. I think I would never have believed what was right in front of my eyes without you.
And then, my mother would have won.
And now, I am determined that she will not.
She will not win in the sense that I step away from who she brought me up to believe myself to be.
That is the change we are working for, here.
To claim our true selves, who turn out to be such lovely and ethical people.
Guilt, resentment even, and rage ~ these were the cost to us, of believing our abusers when they hurt their belief systems into us.
Those are the places you will reclaim as you come through this.
***
Witnessing the behaviors and choices my mother and my sister have made and seen to fruition and even, thought were funny (like the lady driver and the eye rolling incident, or like my mother and WalMart and the feeling of whore)
while working here, and being cherished and strengthened and encouraged here on FOO Chronicles made it possible to me to admit what was happening and finally, to stop forgiving them. I forgave them so routinely that the part of my brain where I should have been thinking WTF was silenced. I could not see anything wrong that my FOO did to me. I could recognize echoes of wrongness in innocuous things ~ in hearing about how they laughed at the lady driver. In the whore in the sun imagery that had to do with my mother and that trip to WalMart where her intention was to subvert me through vanity.
That is what happened there, you guys.
I grew up like that.
***
Okay. So, sometimes, I still get mad enough to use that little red CD demon.
***
Finally, I was able to believe I should be honored. To believe, and to believe it sincerely, too, that I should not be lied to
even by my own mother.
What is happening to us over time as we heal I think is that we no longer betray ourselves so automatically that we lose respect for what is real. In that we do that, and in every instance when we do that, we weaken and denigrate ourselves.
But that was a requirement for our survival, when we were little girls.
And I believe we have known all along, what this cost us.
And we hid that from ourselves, too.
***
I should be cherished and valued for myself, and not just for appearance or for whatever influence I carry.
Which influence, interestingly enough, FOO seem determined to destroy, both in destroying my reputation, and D H reputation in the places where our lives intersect publicly, and in their own thinking.
This kind of poisonous thinking is opposite of everything normal families do. There is no pride in our toxic families. There is no compassion for sure, but there is no pride. There is no honor in a job well done. Everything, everything serves the corrupt value system of the abuser. We believe we need to ferret out the damage. We believe we need to determine who is the liar here, our mothers (or whoever our abusers have been and for me, this now includes my sister) or ourselves. What happened to me is that we reach a tipping point. Enough evidence is accumulated that there is no longer a question of whether to believe ourselves or our abusers.
BOOM.
It is that fast. All at once, we are headed for Germany.
There is a period of disbelief. Like a kaleidoscope feeling where thousands of hurts and beliefs about ourselves are changed or healed below the level of conscious thought.
It is very much like breaking through the surface of the sea into brilliant sun.
Disorienting strength.
It's like we have been dragging weighted chains.
Because of this, we are very strong.
***
I still feel sense of surprise that this is so. I no longer feel sickened and weakened because this is so.
There was a time, and those who have been following my process and witnessing for me will remember it, when I was furious, when I seemed not able to open my eyes in the morning without finding myself enraged. The places where that rage lived are where I am open, where that sense of roominess, of white draperies and blue skies and ocean breezes and white sand are, now.
Whatever. I am waxing poetic at great length, again. I am still trying to define it to myself. I want also to leave a map for whoever comes next. I remember when we were so afraid, and when we did not know whether we would be okay as we punched through the layers of denial and shame and hurt and crushed spirit.
I think this is important for us to know, too. A valuable, factual report on how this feels, and on what happens next, and on holding faith with ourselves through the anger and the pain and the disorientation as we heal.
And to trust that, however angry we become and however rotten it feels to be in process, we
are healing. It is real.
Cedar