Work and Germany; Benedictines and Buddhists: Attitude

[Copabanana]

So...that shine on her is what was taken from me. That is why she shines the way she does, in my memories of her. There is nothing beautiful or even, especially bright about intentionally destroying your own child

I have one picture of me with my mother. Unfortunately I look ugly. She looks beautiful. I have wanted to cut myself out of the picture, but it is my only one of the two of us together. And still, I want to cut myself out. I look ugly, she looks beautiful. And we look alike.

or about seeing to it that your own children will see one another through thinning films of jealousy and hatred and scarcity.

Yes.

The question is less why did she hate me than why did I stay. I stayed because I believed her; believed she was correct in her assessments. That is where the battle was lost. I could not leave because I could not see

I knew she treated me badly. I always knew.

But I could never ever see her as anything other than a star. To be worshiped. Her and me, bad news. Her alone, stellar. A knock out. Me: ugly.

I have learned from this post that each place in my memory where my mother shines is a wound.

Yes.

What will I be left with, when they are healed?

Ourselves.

I think we may have been the ones who made them shine that way.

Yes. I remember introducing my mother to a friend. I brought my mother to her home. I must have been 27 or so. I had built my mother up to be Elizabeth Taylor. Afterwards, the friend said, well, she's attractive, but what's the big deal? Or something like that.

It was probably that the reality was too ugly and too scary to accept

Yes. Part of this buying is because I could never have anything. I was not allowed. My mother bought what she wanted. My mother was extremely self-indulgent with clothes, with jewelry. For herself. Me? I was dressed well by her. I had no free reign to define who I was through fashion, style on her person and home. Although I am gifted at putting outfits together, and incredible about design.

I did not permit myself to exercise this love and talent my whole life. Even when I had money. Now that my mother has died and I am recovering, I am out of control. I am afraid I will be an impoverished elder I am spending so much. Tonight alone I bought maybe 10 things, and committed to maybe buy 40 more, in auctions. I had intended to stop. This is an addiction.

It could be that in every instance where our abusers shine in our memories, we were damaged; traumatized, we may have justified the trauma by elevating the abuser.

I am diseased in wanting. I could not want. So inside me, now I want everything. I cannot stop. My desire for things, is insatiable. I wonder what void I am trying to fill? I do not even like things. I want to stop.

In this way, we made sense of what was lost. Of what we lost, so they could dance in that peculiar light

Yes. While my mother was here in the house, when I went frozen working 24 hours a day, she did well. She was in the light. I kept her in the light. I bought her clothes and jewelry. Like I am buying jewelry for myself. Now. And then, when I decided I could not do it anymore, that to keep her in the light, I was dying, spiritually, emotionally, physically, I made the decision to save myself. And she began to die. I felt I killed her. She could not live without the light.

It was then she starting screaming. She became incontinent. She began to die. For real.

I had applied for work, and was telling my mother I had done so. She said: "I would never hire you

I hate her with all my heart. She is a sadist, Cedar.

But I have read Narcissists do not generally beat their children or kick their dogs or threaten with fire.

Sociopaths do.

Yes.

"I don't need this crap."

I am getting there.

Except the crap I really do not need is that which is arriving everyday in the mail that I am buying. Compulsively.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

I pretty much caught up. Whew. I can go to bed.

 

[Copabanana]

Well, I went to bed. Kind of scared, because M came in to tell me he was going to bed. I did not follow to finish a post. The second night in a row, I did not go to bed with him.

I laid down. I remembered I had not taken my benadryl. I began thinking about this thread and I thought about how meaningful it would be to really work this through. To become organized, and deliberate and conscientious and conscious with respect to my home, and papers and yard, and clothes. And things.

And then the thought that came into my mind was this: I want to kill myself.

No wonder it is hard for me to clean my house. Now wonder my wanting is out of control. It is life or death.

So I got up to get the Benadryl and to record this. So that I am committed. I mean not committed as in 5150, but committed.

Great.

This thread will either save me or kill me. I mean, not really, but kind of. This is a life or death thread.

Thank you, Cedar. I guess.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

I am going to bed now. It is almost 1 am. M is going to be mad tomorrow.

I do not know where to go in my mind after writing these posts. I guess I will just go to sleep.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

So...that shine on her is what was taken from me.

So I had this thought after I went to bed.

I have the radio on all the time as I post. It is non-stop about the Paris attacks. Much of it now is mourning the victims. Young. Beautiful. Full of life and hope. Out on a Friday evening in a chic and slightly rough-edged neighborhood of restaurants and cafes and clubs. Filled with youth. In full bloom and finery.

And now they are dead. Killed off. And on the radio they ask why. Why the young? So bright and light. Why them?

And of course it is because they were in the light, the light that they were targeted to be killed.

Because in Paris and France and Europe as a whole there is not the economic and social assimilation that occurs here.

For generations immigrants from the middle east and africa are marginalized in projects, with little or no access to the economic and social benefits enjoyed by the rest of France, or Italy or Germany. By real French.

Paris, the City of Light, of Lights. But only for those certain young that night. Not for the killers who sought to extinguish them. Extinguish the culture that they enjoyed.

A culture that lives only at the expense of the vast number of others who serve them, clean their houses, work cheaply at those same restaurants, make their clothes in sweatshops all over the world. And wars that make their countries unlivable so they have to flee to Paris where they are excluded and marginalized.

So how does that relate to this thread? The killing rage. The desire to snuff out the light that shines so bright, when you are without. The same rage of our sisters towards us for shining brighter...our own rage (at ourselves) when we want more than we were given, allowed to have--or allowed ourselves to have. That once was felt towards are mothers, but suppressed. For taking everything, and leaving us not much at all.

People kill motivated by this rage, of exclusion and of a want so strong...that they exult at extinguishing those that have, at their expense.

The feelings that are coming up now. For us. Are such as this.

Except we have been trained, and have been more than complicit in squelching them. And directing them inward.

I am killing myself off for wanting pretty things. Because it is a forbidden thing.

The question I have is this: Did I at one time suffer from an envy and rage at my mother so strong, for having my light snuffed out, that was nearly killing in its intensity? Is this why wanting and getting anything is conflicted to the point, that anything I end up getting is a punishment, or I get at the cost of a sense of imperiling my life and well-being?

Did hiding my light in a basket for my whole life long, ever feel at some point--like I was marginalized in a ghetto and made invisible, as if a servant, or some kind of conquered or displaced refugee?

The message here is that some people kill from this intensity of wanting. These ISIS people were not religious. They were just denied. They saw a life that they could never have. Because they were denied it. They kill off what they want.

Us? We were denied it for reasons very much different. But how different were the feelings?

How does one begin to want..things, visibility, beauty, light, acclaim, even--when for a whole life long any desire that was not borne of necessity was inverted, turned against the self...and the rage of not having (by mandate of the mother, long ago forgotten) too. Against oneself.

They are saying the solution to this crisis of terrorism is to go to Syria and to deprive ISIS fighters of the place to train to develop themselves as fighting tools to channel their hatred in the form of killing acts.

That may be the case. But what happens to the want and the rage of millions of marginalized people without a homeland and without a real home. When other people, they see as not entitled, get it all.

Especially when the response of a terrorized populace is to exclude even more, and never one time take a look at the real thing happening.

How like this is our own situation?
__

I was thinking of my sister before I began posting and I cannot remember exactly the thought. But I remember the style and the flavor of the thought.

I was frozen in place. I was chloroformed like a butterfly in a jar and I was pinned down. With nowhere to go. That is what my sister has demanded I be my whole life. I complied. In my mind, I complied.

I'm done with this . I've had enough.

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

In no other area of my life, in a working sense, do I have anywhere near this integrity, discipline or pride. In fact I am a sloth.

In no other area of my life have my curiosity and my passion come seamlessly together. The key is not ambition or lack thereof I don't think, Copa. The key is curiosity. We have worked very hard here because we were curious, and passionate. It involved our lives but more importantly, it involved our children.

So, we did it.

Curiosity.

That is the key.

Then, action is effortless.

When I am in an environment where I do not have a clue, and do it wrong, and sometimes, even ruin the thing I am attempting...that is where I want most often to be. Not where I am the authority, or where I have stopped thinking and begun performing by rote. Real is what happens when we feel uncomfortable; it is what happens when everyone but us knows how to do this.

Then, we grow.

You have been away from yourself, Copa.

I am excited to learn where you will go, next.

Remember Serenity beginning classes and volunteer activity in areas she is passionate about? (Which I am sure she will do again, once she is healed). Those are the kinds of things we begin, as we heal and turn our attention in other directions.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Thus, M does almost all of the housework, and folding clothes. It is not fair. He does not like it. I feel ashamed even telling you.

M loves you. He loved you strong, and he is loving you through this.

That you are aware of the connection Copa, is how you know you are strong enough now to heal it. You can do it. We are all right here if it is too hard.

The commitment to work about which you are passionately curious will get you through it. Or, a determination to: "When chopping onions, just chop onions."

It slows time for me when I do that, Copa. Then, I have time to examine. And I choose not to. I choose silence, and attention to the task at hand.

That is the key.

Think of the disciplines in every spiritual teaching. Apply that to the task in front of you: BOOM

Present.

I can't believe you missed this thread, either.

I am so glad you are here.

:O)

Now we have our jet packs on.

It is very, very noxious for me to feel this anxiety. My self-talk tells me I am not doing it right. Instead of doing it more and better, I do it less, and stop.

Cedar, I had fun with the baking soda and vinegar because it was new and an experiment and because you were with me while I did it. It kept away the abusive self-talk even when the porcelain's shine disappeared. Smile.

For me Copa, I understand these feelings are the negative tapes roaring wordlessly away in the backgrounds of our lives. See how cruel they are; see how utterly without mercy. That is the flavor of our upbringing. That is how that little girl (or that little boy) we were was taught his or her worth.

It's heartbreaking, Copa.

That is what happens to me, too. We purposely fracture our attention, we purposely prevent concentration, because of those horrific negative tapes, Copa.

When chopping onions, just chop onions.

No other thinking allowed. Let it go. Continue to chop onions with intent and purpose.

This is how we heal, at this level where the pain and brokenness are unfathomable and wordless. You can do it, Copa. I did; I am.

When chopping onions, just chop onions.

We are not the only ones Copa, or that phrase would never have been written.

In a cookbook about sincere understanding and appreciation of life, no less.

I love Michael Pollan.

Have you read Botany of Desire?

All about how plants mate, how they make themselves valuable to us, and just who is the master gardener, here. Us, or...them?

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I think that is why I need M's sister with me. I need an enforcer. Or somebody who is benign to counteract the negative feelings.

I think you need Copa.

And mercy for her.

And compassion, and joy in her life, in the wonder of her survival, and of her capacity to heal. It's like a flower, Copa, opening when it is time, and the fragrance is so sweet. Or the caterpillar and butterfly. Let me see whether I can find this picture.

I couldn't. But this one caught my attention. Further in the written part of the story, she talks about the caterpillar defenses. I found that interesting. I was looking for a brilliantly colored very cute caterpillar someone sent on my FB today. That is the one I was looking for, for you. But, I found this one, instead. That is the one that caught my eye.

Beauty is a multi-faceted thing; a thing of form and function.

Perhaps then, this is the most beautiful caterpillar of all.

http://seabrookeleckie.com/2011/10/13/giant-leopard-caterpillar/

maybe, it was the Rastafarian hair look that little girl caterpillar had going on.

I am afraid that my perfectionism will get in the way. That I will not tolerate working through errors. I think this is the heart of things. My mother was a very harsh critic. I have internalized that voice as my own.

It takes 10,000 hours to master anything. No less. The number of hours we put in is the degree of mastery we will attain. Nothing to do with our mothers, who found our competence in pretty much anything we did (right down to keeping their homes spotless and their children fed while we were still children ourselves) threatening.

Have mercy for Copa.

Determine to mist the plants growing so beautifully, Copa. Like the Japanese lady. What was taken did not change who she was. Because it was taken, she was required to prove to herself that she was who she believed herself to be.

She was like us in that way.

Yes. But how to work through from one extreme to another? That is the question.

Copa, I think the answer is: When chopping onions, just chop onions.

Nothing more. Nothing less. Nothing to do with other onions we have chopped, or someone else has chopped better. Nothing to do with what we are cooking with the onion, or whatever else might happen to the onion once we have chopped it.

When chopping onions, just chop onions.

Tears will come.

Here is a story I have not told in such a long time. I love it.

Russia. Long ago, and on a very cold, windy night. Battling the snow and the wind, the wealthiest man in Russia makes his way to a tiny wooden pub, the tracks he's made filling with snow even as he makes his way inside. Twelve small, round tables for one person, a candle on each.

There is no other illumination.

The wealthiest man in Russia is seated.

The waiter brings a cutting board, a long, silver knife, and...an onion.

Like the other patrons, the wealthiest man in Russia begins chopping the onion.

Tears flow.

Maybe I will devise a Psychology of Domestic Work. Like Sports Psychology or Health Psychology or Psychology of Law. How interesting? I am already interested.

Joy.

The joy of the sun pouring through a sparkling window; the scent of a well run home where the lighting is perfect and dinner at the heart of it and the sheets are fine and clean and soft against the skin.

And we get there by chopping onions, and by understanding in our bones that the value of the work being done is that we are choosing to do it, that we are committed to our work.

The result is a forgone conclusion.

This is what our mothers took from us: We watched her eyes when the job was done, to know what the work had meant.

That is why there is anxiety.

Never see ourselves through their eyes, Copa. Defiantly, to see only through our own.

Misting the plants, like the Japanese lady. An act of faith, until finally we see them thrive, so healthy and strong and growing in our care.

But for now, we are just chopping onions.

The tears flow.

We blame them on the onions and then, one day...find them beautiful, and claim them for our own.

:O)

M and his sister use remedies that come from Aztec times, taught them by their mother. So when we drink a tea made of a certain plant, she is there with us in spirit. So there is relationship there. Not a pill from a pharmacy. How alone and sterile can you get?

Have you read Aztec, by Gary Jennings?

http://www.garyjennings.com/

One of my favorite writers. He has written also about Marco Polo, and at length about the myth and mystery and history of circus.

Very well written material.

Everybody in the household went nuts.

A neighbor was casting a spell. It went on for a couple of weeks. With progressively weirder stuff showing up.

OK. I know I am getting sidetracked. I will stop. I will stop here. I would have gone on and on just so I do not have to deal with anxiety provoking post.

Dream catchers and rosaries and Christian love and compassion. But these are scary things. Doubly frightening in that the energy will come back to the person who sent it out in the first place. There are always mistakes. I've read that there was a slight mispronunciation in the Word that created all things, and from that one invisible misspoken word, all the evil in the world was come to be.

That is very scary imagery.

What mean people, to do such a thing. Right up there with my stupid sister, praying a ring of thorns around myself and my family to "bring me to the Lord".

With whom she walks on a daily basis, apparently.

roar

Living in conscious knowledge of our own mortality, of death and disease and heartbreak is frightening enough without adding in weird, power-over people getting their jollies through scaring everyone else ~ generally, through some form of religious identification.

That is evil. To scare people is wicked, and very wrong.

It's been going on forever, though.

They say it has to do with focusing mental energy. With concentration, then. Like telling little kids spooky stories.

Then we grow up.

I am sorry that happened anywhere near you, Copa.

That is very scary.

I am holding your hand.

Okay, wait. I am holding your hand invisibly.

:O)

Taking all the pans and pots out of the cabinet and making music.

Ha! The kids and grands used to do this. We had a special lower cupboard in whatever house we were in and that is where the kids could crawl in or beat on pans with plastic spatulas or wooden spoons or store their coloring books or puzzles and etc and when they were not with us (grands) then that is where all their little special belongings could be stored until they came back.

My grandmother had a cabinet like that in her kitchen, too.

:O)

That is where I got the idea, I suppose. They loved that.

Yes. I cannot work my way through this. I am referring to housework here, not appearance. Except, the thing is, I have huge issues about appearance.

I do not look at myself in the mirror for days and days. I avert my gaze when I brush my teeth. I cannot bear it. To look at myself. What is that about? That is why my hair becomes a rat's nest.

We need to learn to see through our own eyes, Copa.

I don't know what I look like, either.

Some days, so grossly ugly. Some days, really pretty. Most people seem to respond to me as though I am really pretty. So, maybe that is true. Lately, as we have come through this, I only remember the eyes of people.

I remember my own eyes.

That is who we are.

Still, we have a responsibility, not only to the body, but to the joy in it. We are fortunate to have bodies, and hair, and eyes and fingers to feel things with. I sound so strange, I understand that. I believe we have been taught that our bodies too are things of the abuser.

They are not.

Our bodies are most singularly our own to play with, and to inhabit, and to see through and feel breezes and to smell fresh sheets and dinner.

And our men in our lives.

Woot!

Yeah, but what if you feel you cannot work?

This is where we begin to think about what we know of spiritual traditions. In every one, bar none, there is the teaching having to do the spritual value of work.

It isn't about the work. It is about commitment to self through work.

That is why we have a problem with it. The problem is common enough that every spiritual discipline addresses it.

Who are we to argue?

Simply begin.

Then, stay present.

Then, finish and begin something else.

The value is in us.

Learning this will require facing down our abusers. That is why the practice of work is of value.

Not the work, Copa.

Us.

But I became anxious it was sexual massage. I mean, I work with prostitutes. Nothing phases me. I lived in a brothel. And all of a sudden I am afraid to call a spa because it might be prostitute? So for two weeks I could not do it, until today I called her to give her the number. I could not call

I believe in massage. It's like yoga. I think yoga is better, though. We untie all the cramped places, enabling rich, healthy, well-oxygenated blood to flow.

We are meant to be whole and healthy, Copa.

This stuff we are doing? That's just how we get there.

This is meant to happen.

There is nothing we have to do but say "Yes".

I need to look this up. I know nothing about it.

http://www.perseus.tufts.edu/Herakles/stables.html

How sad for us. I remember when I was about 11. (I always loved to be in our yard.) There was a pregnant cat which was there with me. This was the first cat I remember knowing. Strange, I know. I bonded with her. I remember feeling safe with her. I was not anywhere else. I am so grateful I have my Stella, who has healed quite nicely from her dental surgery.

There is a belief system claiming that dogs have a ministry of love, and cats, and that everything we see and do and are is part of all of it in ways we do not understand.

Our animals, in their innocence and trust, demonstrate courage and a good attitude. One of the ladies who posts here has at the bottom of her profile something to the effect that she wished she were half the person her dogs believe her to be.

Life seems to work that way, sometimes. Those we believe we are helping or superior to or loving turn out to have been saving us pretty routinely. When we see our lives in that way, we see we have been doing the same, in our own weakness or uncertainty.

Isn't that something.

It is already almost gorgeous.

Oooh, I am pleased and excited. We are not meant to have lovely things that are ours, Copa. Only the abuser, and they claim it all. Steal it or denigrate it or, if they are like my sister and cannot quite duplicate it, pretend to knowledge about just how they would supercede whatever it is ~ even if it is only a rented condo on a beach somewhere.

I am so with you in spirit as you possess the beauty in this home, Copa. The quality of the light, the scent of it, the colors you will have chosen.

We will toast with Lagavulin.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lagavulin_distillery

Ring of crystal.

This happened to me, too. In houses I already owned, had lived in, and decorated. It was a question of self possession. Those freaking abusers!

I am pleased and happy for you, Copa.

And for me, too. Life is so rich a thing Copa, and we have been imprisoned.

So will I know you, by the stars
By these brilliant, icy stars
Shining undiminished in your eyes.

It will be like coming home for the first time, Copa.

Just think: We have never been home.

But my mother, particularly, treated me very harshly, very often. Particularly about cleaning the house.

So did mine. Imagine what it will be Copa, to be home for the first time.

Savor it. You must allow and accept and cherish; you must give permission. That is what anxiety and personal appearance and every attack on you now is about. The answer: When chopping onions....

Roar.

I am stuck in italics and cannot make it stop even if I do push on the blue thing, Copa.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I did my work in a hostile land. Always vulnerable to denunciation. And largely hidden.

Do you see the similarity to home, Copa? That is what Family of Origin felt like for you: "I did my work in a hostile land. Always vulnerable to denunciation. And largely hidden."

Pseudo-mom.

For me, this too is true: And largely hated.

I am not dramatizing or exaggerating. This is what I see, beneath the wormy rottenness that passed for Family of Origin. They hate me now enough to shun me. To shun me.

That is a weapon used by religious fanatics and etc.

That is not what you do to a daughter, to a sister or niece or aunt.

To a sister, Copa.

"I did my work in a hostile land. Always vulnerable to denunciation. And largely hidden."

Time is up, for them.

It was up any time we said.

Yes, but how to start?

When chopping onions....

It has to do with that, but I don't know the end because I am not there, yet.

I am a poor decision maker in my own life. I either dither and dither. Or I am impulsive and feel out of control. I wonder if this is one more thing I am trying to work out my my compulsive buying.

Oh, wow, Copa. Want to explore it?

That is genius. Ten thousand ways to be, quickly and efficiently explored and discarded. I don't believe you are self destructing in your shopping or your defiant insistence on taking this time to heal and going so stubbornly to bed to do it.

I love it.

Could you be trying on who Copa will be? Think of everything you have learned through your explorations. Think of the emotional attachment that makes it a compulsion ~ the loving or hating of self, and the comparison to Mother.

Copa, that is a sterling insight.

When I feel most ill, most blind about what is happening? I learn later that I was in fact healing old, and very deep, wounds.

So how does that relate to this thread? The killing rage. The desire to snuff out the light that shines so bright, when you are without. The same rage of our sisters towards us for shining brighter...our own rage (at ourselves) when we want more than we were given, allowed to have--or allowed ourselves to have. That once was felt towards are mothers, but suppressed. For taking everything, and leaving us not much at all.

Yes.

Thank you, Copa.

Pseudo-mom.

We are pseudo mom, hated by both for the shine on us and for our capacity to shine onto them.

That is what they hate us for.

That is what they work to destroy.

Am I stuck in italics, again? No.

Good.

:O)

The question I have is this: Did I at one time suffer from an envy and rage at my mother so strong, for having my light snuffed out, that was nearly killing in its intensity? Is this why wanting and getting anything is conflicted to the point, that anything I end up getting is a punishment, or I get at the cost of a sense of imperiling my life and well-being?

This is what happened, to me.

Killing rage. Twisted around and focused onto myself because to kill, to wish dead, to be that angry, even in my thinking, is to destroy the essential me. Whether I would live on or die physically would not matter. What mattered about me would have been compromised and sullied.

So, I focused it onto myself.

That is the fear of vengeance thing I am always posting about. The mechanism of it is to become aware of where that hatred and rage are, and where they are being focused.

Real or not, very real indeed, to me. It matters very much, how we think.

That is how we define ourselves.

Another layer, another prison wall, Copa.

You are coming through beautifully.

See the stars?

***

Anger, angry, seething with it, is where the energy is come from to burst through. You are strong enough.

:O)

Welcome yourself into the world, Copa.

Cedar

 

[InsaneCdn]

Her and me, bad news. Her alone, stellar. A knock out. Me: ugly.

Copa... the problem with this whole statement is the last word.
Two people may be a problem for each other, and yet shine on their own when not with that person. That may have been true for your mother. But it is also true for YOU.

My dear Copa. Depression is ugly. And one of the ugliest parts of it is that we end up thinking that the depression IS us. It isn't. It's a disease. No different than cancer, or bi-polar, or diabetes, or addiction. It can be terminal. But we do not need to BE the disease. The disease is just part of the picture. We need to focus on the REAL "me". Which is hard, because things like depression really cloud our vision.

Start with one thing, Copa. Bring one thing under control. I'd suggest... start at the "top". Your hair. Get the right products (I sent you a private message). Work out the tangles. Then, put your hair on a schedule. Brushed out twice a day, and done in a specific hair style. And I'm going to suggest that you change that hair style at least one a week. See how many different things you can do with that hair, the way it is.

If in the end you feel like cutting it, do NOT go really short. It will be too much shock. Do something in-between first. So it doesn't take so long to grow out if shorter isn't really you. That's just my opinion, but I've seen lots of young women regret cutting long hair really short.

 

[New Leaf]

But we do not need to BE the disease. The disease is just part of the picture. We need to focus on the REAL "me". Which is hard, because things like depression really cloud our vision.

True words, IC.

Start with one thing, Copa. Bring one thing under control. I'd suggest... start at the "top". Your hair. Get the right products (I sent you a private message). Work out the tangles. Then, put your hair on a schedule. Brushed out twice a day, and done in a specific hair style. And I'm going to suggest that you change that hair style at least one a week. See how many different things you can do with that hair, the way it is.

These are very good suggestions. Long hair can be very versatile.

If in the end you feel like cutting it, do NOT go really short. It will be too much shock. Do something in-between first. So it doesn't take so long to grow out if shorter isn't really you. That's just my opinion, but I've seen lots of young women regret cutting long hair really short.

Wise advice also, a drastic cut can be a shock, and give one "hair withdrawals." It is a good idea to go slowly. There is time to think things over, and we have so much information available through the web. Sometimes what we do in an instant, is not really what we wanted in the long run.
I really liked the gibson and braided styles Cedar shared.
In the end, it is your choice Copa.
I am sure whatever you choose will be beautiful!
You are always describing your mom as beautiful, so you must be beautiful as well.

As you wrote to me, try not to be so hard on yourself....
leafy

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Except this makes sense because there are treatments that involve touch and relationship and listening.

There is a theory that attention heals, too. That if we sit, those who are our patients feel we have attended more fully. They feel seen.

That if we have established a relationship of trust and add touch, our patients feel loved because they feel accepted, and because we all crave touch and people who are sick, and they elderly, do not receive it.

The touch of a professional care giver can leave us worse than never having been touched, at all.

Finally, there was research done on healing touch (not Healing Touch, which doesn't involve actual touching), but the healing that can flow, one to another, from trust and actual, physical touch. So, Hospice patients were lightly massaged, sacrum to cervical vertebrae, for a period of I forgot how many minutes. Not even massage deep enough to stimulate muscle groups or unlock toxins. Just the gentle, repetitious stroking of fingertips, bottom to top. Those patients experienced their pain differently. There was still pain, for them, but it was experienced differently. It was not seen as sent to hurt them as a judgment, so much as nothing more than the effects of the disease process their bodies were undergoing.

I did a paper on that research, and conducted a mini-research of my own.

I forgot the other thing I was going to tell you.

But: Pain is colored and coded by our perceptions of why. If we have rotten memories from childhood or adult abuse, we will perceive it as punishment and ourselves as meriting punishment. Touch ~ the simple, unskilled, gentle touch of someone we trust, can change those perceptions.

I need to go and start volunteering again, you guys.

I love that stuff.

It heals the person doing the touching, too.

It's so real.

Cedar

 

[Copabanana]

A culture that lives only at the expense of the vast number of others who serve them

I will learn to carry my own water.

I do not want to live at the expense of anybody else, or their labor. It is a question of integrity. Am I doing the same to M as was done to me?

The key is curiosity. We have worked very hard here because we were curious, and passionate.

I have never thought of this before. This is work.

where I do not have a clue

How do you have this courage, Cedar? What drives you towards this? What in you would make you seek the pain, and the light? What is your motivation to do so? What do you hold in your mind as you do?

I am understanding it, it is not a goal, as I sought, for a degree or a specific career. It is the part that came later the commitment to do it in a sterling way. To the practice of it. I think the commitment to doing the work well came because it was something I had to do. It was a job, so I could hide from myself that it was really for me. I could pretend it was for others.

But the practice of it is everything. Like M lives his life. He is impatient with any goals that are not immediate. He knows that they are likely lies.

But me? Goals are all I have.

You have been away from yourself, Copa.

I am excited to learn where you will go, next.

I have been away from myself for nearly my whole life, Cedar. I am coming home.
I looked here and there. Up and down. And here along I have been. I am next. Scared COPA said, hoping in part, she was lying. Scared.

See how cruel they are; see how utterly without mercy. That is the flavor of our upbringing.

Yes.

We purposely fracture our attention, we purposely prevent concentration, because of those horrific negative tapes, Copa.

Yes.

This is how we heal, at this level where the pain and brokenness are unfathomable and wordless.

Focus. Is that it.

choosing to do it

Just chop onions.

Have you read Botany of Desire?

No.

We watched her eyes when the job was done, to know what the work had meant.

Like me with M, too.

That is why there is anxiety

And fear.

Our bodies are most singularly our own to play with, and to inhabit, and to see through and feel breezes and to smell fresh sheets and dinner.

And our men in our lives.

This is all a paradise that I have denied myself (and M) A Garden of Earthly Delights. That is what Hiraeth may be for me, I think. I will write a book and give it that title.

Learning this will require facing down our abusers. That is why the practice of work is of value.

I am scared, Cedar.

It was a question of self possession

Yes. I have lived for others my whole life.

It will be like coming home for the first time, Copa.

Just think: We have never been home.

No. We have never been home. How so very sad.

Could you be trying on who Copa will be?

Yes, I believe this is so.

Think of the emotional attachment that makes it a compulsion ~ the loving or hating of self, and the comparison to Mother.

I think I am doing it in spite of the feelings, using the adrenaline produced to mask them. There is an excitement that masks the unease. I cannot stay calm while I want. I am very, very scared. This I cover with a rush of excitement.

I will see where this day goes, Cedar. Thank you very much.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

here is a theory that attention heals, too

That if we have established a relationship of trust and add touch

Cedar, try to get that book by Peter Breggins called Guilt, Shame and Anxiety. He talks about compassionate therapies that focus on relationship, trust and care. He is saying the same thing as you. I put the book down, but maybe I need to get back to it for this current work.

I have to go and try to get something done. I will continue a bit later.

Thank you, all.

COPA

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

I have one picture of me with my mother. Unfortunately I look ugly. She looks beautiful. I have wanted to cut myself out of the picture, but it is my only one of the two of us together. And still, I want to cut myself out. I look ugly, she looks beautiful. And we look alike.

A tool for your healing then, Copa.

Isn't it an amazing thing, when we realize that what we see is affected in these ways? That is why I am forever posting that I don't know what I look like. Though, as has been mentioned before, I do seem to cut quite a swath in the over eighty crowd, who routinely fall at my feet and flirt with me shamelessly. To which D H responds: "Cardiac event, Cedar."

He really did say that once, you guys.

:O)

How do you have this courage, Cedar? What drives you towards this? What in you would make you seek the pain, and the light? What is your motivation to do so? What do you hold in your mind as you do?

My kids and grands, and all the generations that will come after. And this may not make a difference Copa, but it is the one difference that I can make. Plus, I have never been a coward. Remember when I believed that was my only reality? Because I had not attacked the mother abusing those I was to protect? The little boy, what she did to his face. Those traumatic memories.

Roar.

But I was not a coward then, or I would not have gone to the source of the crying and the yelling.

But I did go there.

Just like I am doing now and so are you, Copa.

I know you think you went to bed in weakness. I don't think that.

You did it because you could, and you took your furious stand there, and you are coming through it, now.

And there is nothing easy or pleasant about it. And maybe, there are those who break, confronting these things.

And that is a risk we take, too. Every time we go too far, that is as real a risk as can be.

F you, Mom.

That is what Hiraeth may be for me, I think. I will write a book and give it that title.

You will.

:O)

I am scared, Cedar.

I think this is true, Copa: We have always been scared. We did not let ourselves feel it because to live in conscious knowledge of it would have broken our sanity. We compartmentalized. Now, we are opening those locked away places.

And freeing the Child within.

That little girl that was you, Copa?

This intensity of fear is her only reality.

But here you are. Listen, just listen, and do your work. This is work, too. Everything we do, even laughter, can be sacred work. Because we are there. That is what the abuser stole: Presence in our own lives.

And they had no right, Copa.

Decency forbade it.

But they did it anyway.

To us.

Roar, right?

I am very, very scared. This I cover with a rush of excitement.

This could be true for you, Copa. For me, both the fear and the exhilaration are real. Remember my posting about the surfing video? It's like that. And the cold water, deep and black, just a little further out.

It is exhilarating, Copa. Both the fear, and the courage of excitement, which takes bravery. If our abusers knew of this, Copa? They would move heaven and earth to stop it. To stop us.

In our tracks.

That is why I love to make noise, in my healing, and am always roaring and angry and riding loud motorcycles with rude things stitched in exquisitely worked needlepoint which I create while guzzling expensive Scotch.

:O)

F you, Mom.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Cedar, try to get that book by Peter Breggins called Guilt, Shame and Anxiety.

I did try, Copa. The library here does not have it. Maybe I spelled the name wrong. I will try again. But if that's what he said, then I say he was exactly right.

Which is terminally cool, because it means we can help anyone, any time. And we don't need any special training or anything. Just ourselves.

Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Unfortunately I look ugly.

Copa, you are so cute the way you phrase things.

"Unfortunately I look ugly."

From this day forward when I am having an ugly day? This is what I am going to say to myself: "Unfortunately I look ugly."





Cedar

 

[Scent of Cedar *]

Now that my mother has died and I am recovering, I am out of control. I am afraid I will be an impoverished elder I am spending so much. Tonight alone I bought maybe 10 things, and committed to maybe buy 40 more, in auctions. I had intended to stop. This is an addiction.

Actually it is, Copa. These sites, like casinos are too, are designed to further victimize those without defense to them.

What would be the result if you intended to research and buy only the perfect thing? The perfect piece of exactly the jewelry you will wear. The perfect set of pearls; the perfect pendant, cut to fracture light into thousands of brilliant colors. You could learn about the many different kinds of pearls there are, and how they are valued and where they are found and how they are tied.

About how diamonds are mined. The history is a vicious and tragic one.

There are so many colors of pearls.

There are places like Tarpon Springs, settled by Greek divers for the oysters in those waters.

What if part of your work were the question of intent, Copa?

That is what was taken from you. The right to establish intent.

Copa...who are you buying these things for.

Cedar

I am afraid I will be an impoverished elder....

Yes. Do you know why, Copa? Is there a particular voice, a feel to it? You are in the thick of battle, Copa.

"Breathing easily and well, from a place beyond fear."

I read that in a book somewhere, but cannot remember the writer's name, to give proper credit.

 

[Copabanana]

That is what was taken from you. The right to establish intent.

Copa...who are you buying these things for.

Yes. Not voracious appetite. Intent.

I am buying these for my self. To represent in an outward way who I am. Who I choose to be. To present myself fully. Except I do not know who I am.

I do not know what is my intent. To be. Absent external motivators, I do not know who I am.

It is as if I am lost in a crowd and I look from one face to the next, hoping one and then the other will be there for me. I am looking desperately for myself in the crowd. And the longer I seek the more desperate and more willing I am to grab onto one, then the other. I am seeking outside myself, what I am. Who I am. Because, apparently, I do not know.

COPA

 

[Copabanana]

Cedar, I do not know what my intent is, or should be, when I buy. I do not know how to want anything with intention. Or with care. I do not understand value, and what is my own. This is something terribly basic and intrinsic. That I do not know how to do or what to do.

I will stop now. Until I better understand. But I do not know how to cultivate desire, to cultivate it, in a caring and intentional way.

How would one learn that?

COPA