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Update: Detachment as Spiritual Practice, and an Update
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<blockquote data-quote="Echolette" data-source="post: 613387" data-attributes="member: 17269"><p>Cedar,</p><p>thank you for sharing that story with us...the dance of dawning realization foxtrotting with old habit, guilt, thought patterns, fear, denial. Two steps to the left, one back, quick step forward, move slowly around the room.</p><p>Sitting with the grief, the fear, the yuck, makes it so much more bearable. We spend so much energy running and hiding and thinking omg, I can't bear to feel this way, what can I do? movies, drinks, friends, exercise, anything anything anything to avoid just being there with the bad feelings. But letting them wash through us and pass on feels right. I think you are on the right path with that. I think it will help you be the lovely, loving, independent and yet interconnected woman that you are. I think it will help you see your sad sad kids and let them be as they are.</p><p>People told me for years that my difficult child was capable of more than I thought, that he could manage things when he chose to (he always could do whatever he needed to acquire an ipod as a reward, that is for darn sure), that he was manipulative. I thought my sweet sad damaged boy was just clueless, completely incapable of planned behavior. But I think, I am starting to see, I am starting to know, as you are....that that is not correct. That he does things, says things becuase they work with me. Because through years of therapy he has learned what to say. Because he knows that I am sad and guilty, because his twin sister was so easy for me and he was so hard, that I looked at her 5 times as often as I looked at him, talked to her more, smiled at her more because she was knowable and he was not. Because I yelled at him so much as a kid because he just...didn't....get...anything. Was always in the way, always late, always a tantrum, always a toileting accident (yes till age 4 1/2), but never at school, only with me....so many signs of illness, and I knew it then, its just that with my 4 kids and 80 hour a week job and useless cheerful narcissistic ex husband (what is the abbreviation for that, anyway?) I just snapped over and over, and it was always, always at teh difficult child. And then we sent him to military school when he was in 8th grade, trying to give him structure, trying to try something new, since what we were doing wasn't working. My mother said that was mean. She is dead now. I can never explain to her that we were trying so hard, aiming at his long term funciton and happiness, but that I believe now that was a pivotal, terrible mistake. But I also know, believe, that his story was written a long long time ago...before me, even, and that my choices were like pebbles on the windshiled of a speeding car.</p><p>Yes, healthy. Take care of yourself. Let these days and hurts and even joys be there, and inhabit you till they pass. They always do pass, which is the miracle.</p><p>I went to a retreat this summer called the Art of Suffering. It embodied what you are describing. If we embrace suffering, learn how to suffer instead of running away, we suffer much less, and can smile again sooner. No mud no lotus.</p><p>Thank you again for telling your tale, and for your generous support on all these threads.</p><p>Echolette.</p></blockquote><p></p>
[QUOTE="Echolette, post: 613387, member: 17269"] Cedar, thank you for sharing that story with us...the dance of dawning realization foxtrotting with old habit, guilt, thought patterns, fear, denial. Two steps to the left, one back, quick step forward, move slowly around the room. Sitting with the grief, the fear, the yuck, makes it so much more bearable. We spend so much energy running and hiding and thinking omg, I can't bear to feel this way, what can I do? movies, drinks, friends, exercise, anything anything anything to avoid just being there with the bad feelings. But letting them wash through us and pass on feels right. I think you are on the right path with that. I think it will help you be the lovely, loving, independent and yet interconnected woman that you are. I think it will help you see your sad sad kids and let them be as they are. People told me for years that my difficult child was capable of more than I thought, that he could manage things when he chose to (he always could do whatever he needed to acquire an ipod as a reward, that is for darn sure), that he was manipulative. I thought my sweet sad damaged boy was just clueless, completely incapable of planned behavior. But I think, I am starting to see, I am starting to know, as you are....that that is not correct. That he does things, says things becuase they work with me. Because through years of therapy he has learned what to say. Because he knows that I am sad and guilty, because his twin sister was so easy for me and he was so hard, that I looked at her 5 times as often as I looked at him, talked to her more, smiled at her more because she was knowable and he was not. Because I yelled at him so much as a kid because he just...didn't....get...anything. Was always in the way, always late, always a tantrum, always a toileting accident (yes till age 4 1/2), but never at school, only with me....so many signs of illness, and I knew it then, its just that with my 4 kids and 80 hour a week job and useless cheerful narcissistic ex husband (what is the abbreviation for that, anyway?) I just snapped over and over, and it was always, always at teh difficult child. And then we sent him to military school when he was in 8th grade, trying to give him structure, trying to try something new, since what we were doing wasn't working. My mother said that was mean. She is dead now. I can never explain to her that we were trying so hard, aiming at his long term funciton and happiness, but that I believe now that was a pivotal, terrible mistake. But I also know, believe, that his story was written a long long time ago...before me, even, and that my choices were like pebbles on the windshiled of a speeding car. Yes, healthy. Take care of yourself. Let these days and hurts and even joys be there, and inhabit you till they pass. They always do pass, which is the miracle. I went to a retreat this summer called the Art of Suffering. It embodied what you are describing. If we embrace suffering, learn how to suffer instead of running away, we suffer much less, and can smile again sooner. No mud no lotus. Thank you again for telling your tale, and for your generous support on all these threads. Echolette. [/QUOTE]
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