IMPERFECT Lady

Law of Reality

A point in time, simply a point!  However there seems to be points of high and low, of sad and joy, of learning and growing, of leaving and going, of undoing and doing.

 

So maybe there are opposite points in time?  Maybe we lull our selves into thinking only high points exists, which then puts us in a false sense of security.

 

Secure about what?  Secure where?  In our minds?  That seems to be the only place security lies?  How is that possible?  Points have homes in our minds and in reality?

 

When a call comes in or someone gives you information, where do you go to see if it is correct?  Mind?  Or do you begin to look backwards for evidence and then look around in this point of time for it to be true?

 

I know this too sounds confusing, but in my world, when I answered the phone and the voice said, “it was grandpa”, I knew that within me the words matched the fear that coursed through my body.

 

No disbelief arose.  It wasn’t like I had a choice.  It just came out of nowhere and landed securely in my knowing.  And immediately took a fast train backwards, making stops that connected images that fit the words. 

 

While speeding backwards gathering more and more evidence it seemed like you are crashing down trestles of long held beliefs, bridges of thoughts, built by emotions…. time seems to move in two directions or more at one time.  You are here and there and over there, all at the same time.

 

The dreams and hopes of futures collide with the fears of unknowing, shame, guilt, horror, sorrow, slammed into a land where past thoughts and beliefs feebly stand.

 

Imagine Feeble thoughts and beliefs, there is no such thing!  We build our lives, our marriages, our kids, our friends, and our days, all are based on feeble thoughts.  Now that seems mental.

 

I had a belief that my Birth family stood firmly behind me. Held me up.

 

As we live our lives, it is fluid, it comes and it goes like the waves on the ocean. Sometimes it comes in bringing treats, sometimes sorrows, sometimes pain, sometimes disbelief, sometimes corrections to long held beliefs. 

 

It seems almost impossible that one wave will come in and all who stand there will be affected differently.  How is that possible?  The wave is the same, the exact same ingredients, yet it will cover each of them differently, affect them differently.  Leaving them either standing taller, or may even take them further out to sea.

 

How does this work?  Is it their pasts, their firm beliefs, fear of unknowing, what makes some come through and what makes others sink.

 

I feel like a wave of Truth washed over me, literally leaving very little of me standing, yet some how once the feeble thoughts were taken out to sea, I stood stronger.

 

The point in time will be forever etched, and I will forever trust, not me, my thoughts, my beliefs, but the wave.

 

Unknowing what the next moment brings, I just immerse my self in the Present, feeling all, seeing all, hearing all.  This is all there is, until the next wave.

 

I meet people and understand, that for some, the ocean tosses them about, tearing up their thoughts and beliefs, and they struggle to control the ocean.

 

I fought it too, with no strength left, I surrendered.

I thought I was drowning, losing all my beliefs, nothing to hold on to.

All that was there was the ocean, the waves, and me.

 

With no fight let, I gave up.

I gave up my thoughts, all my beliefs, my future of old hopes and dreams. 

I thought I would die, instead I new me was born.

 

The Ocean and I, where will we go, what will we do, who can dream the bigger dream?

All I know it is simply impossible to fight reality and win, only but 100% of the time, just as a wise woman told me.

 

"I fought the Law and the Law won", that refrain just came to me.....I will take it as the Law of Reality.

God's Peace

I am reposting this for a daughter...

 

“You are the mother you have been waiting for.  When you focus on the mother, you become motherless.”

            Byron Katie

Happy Birthday Mom, I want to thank you for all you taught me.  All the pain you suffered so I could get it right.  I want to thank you for staying true to form, for staying the course, so I could see by your example where it would lead me.  I had you to show me the awful way it would turn out, if I was not strong, if I had no courage, if I had only fear. 

It is your birthday, and I wish you well, I hold no resentments or anger.  I have lived as you and wouldn’t wish it on my worst enemy.  Your walk is hard it is not an easy one.  I know the trials on the way, the blindness, the unknowing, no memory, no path, the lost hopes, the dreams that never arrive, the pit of desperation, of false hopes, of others changing, endless roads to no where. 

I know how it is to hurt unintentionally, to see but not see, to hear but not hear, to have children you can’t protect, to lose more than your heart can hold.

Some how, by some miracle, I have been spared of lifetime of that.  I have been allowed to spring free, allowed to know a new me.  I was able to walk free of the prison that holds you so tight.

We don’t know why I was set free, why I walked away, why I could see what you never could, why I could hear reality.  All we know is that the two of us are the same, but different, for some reason you had to be left behind in a hole of a million sorrows.

I stand here outside in the brightness of day, with truth and honesty, reality and kindness. I know why you did what you did, for you didn’t have another way. 

If I had to wish a wish for you, it would be this, “I wish you love, peace and joy, a Heaven of bliss” 

It is because of you, I am who I am.

Ironically we were both motherless yours died when you were two.

You had no one to show you the way. 

  

 As a mother I know it would bring me great peace to know that my life was for naught.

Yours was not, for you gave birth to me.

If only I could return the favor and lead you out free, but it doesn’t seem to be the way of it for now.

I leave you knowing where you are, and I wish you peace.

God’s Peace.

 

String

I realized that I was left alone in my mind twice. The second time was when I was empty.  Left alone in my mind without Love’s supervision.

 

My old version of love supervised my life.  I had a mental supervisor.

I also remember saying, I have a mental lady in my mind.

 

I was always writing out what the mental lady would do and what I would do.  Me, the new and empty of love me.

 

If any situation arose, and I became confused, if my body was struggling with fear and wanting to flee, and my mind was challenging, taunting, wanting to push the guilt agenda forward, I would literally write out the questions, and dialogue it back and forth, and do so, until finally by the last few sentences a new way would emerge.

 

It seemed the paper was a wise old woman, and listened to the ramblings of a confused little girl in a big body and in a very grownup world.  With all kinds of pressures either pulling forward or yanking me back.  In my mind I did not have clear view, I literally was a jumble of mixed up wires and emotions and my body too, seem confused.  I could not even find a pinhead of clarity to stand upon in the sea of mental.  And a puff of breath could send me toppling in either direction.  I had one weak string to hold onto, a flimsy strand, that would grow larger and larger with each new step.

 

The strand, that I now call truth, reality, God, Intelligence, Clarity, a shining beacon forward, glimmer called hope.  That single strand, was stronger than all the mental, all the confusion, and all the unconsciousness I felt. 

 

And that is the strand that seemed to find a new answer, when my mind failed.  It would find a way out, a new voice, the strength of a NO, to holding my hand as I searched for a new meaning of love.

 

I held on and I didn’t know really really what I was holding on to, but to leave it go, meant to fall back into an ocean of dysfunction.

 

I didn’t know where I was going, if I would like it there when I arrived, if I would have people, or love, or anything, but I knew that I would literally die if I had to go back.

 

So forward you march, fearlessly heading to who knows where.

 

We used to say as children “you believahead”, meaning we would hook our little red wagons up to anything that came down the road. And mostly buying into a dream, a pipe dream, a fantasy that would never come to fruition, what an idiot we thought them to be.

 

At times my walking would have even me believe I was totally certifiably mental.  Yet what I came to find out is was going out of my mind.  I was literally challenging being in reality while being in reality only not knowing so in my mind.

 

In my mind, I had a wonderful loving Gi GI like mother a father similar to my husband, and so leaving such wonderfulness behind caused me mountains of grief, only to find I was grieving for what I couldn’t be.

 

I couldn’t even be like the picture in my mind that I wanted my mother to become. 

 

Mental sounding, well try living inside that body and mind!  I remember saying to others, ‘at least you can walk away from me, I live here’….

 

This struggle of mental verses clarity was a daily, minute by minute dual and we really didn’t know who would ultimately win the fight. Would it be mental on the Left or reality on the Right!

 

Oh I had my little red wagon securely hooked up to the right side in fact I sat on the right damn well hoping I was in the wagon on the right path leading to the right destination, to the right field.  A believahead.

 

Yep I was wholeheartedly putting all my efforts to being right in heading right in going right all the while my left side, mental lady hollered.

She was mad, she was angry she was resentful, she literally wanted me back, the old me.

 

And I was just as determined to not let the first 46 years define who I was, I was going to use it to make a new me.

 

Imperfectly, but determinedly, bullheadedly, single focused I went forward.

 

For I pulled my whole family in my wagon, I did not travel alone.

I carried many, not only my own children, but their children, not only in this house, but other houses, my sisters, their children.  I felt the weight of the world to get this right.

 

Why?  I don’t know.  I knew if I could make my wagon go to the field of peace, love and joy, if I could do what I always wanted others to do for me, then perhaps, just perhaps, I could share this and help other little confused in their minds girls.

 

Perhaps, just perhaps help one, just one.

And in the end I did.

I helped me.

I saved me, well me and that little strand of string, we DID IT!.

 

 

Solo Dance

“The thing you are terrified of losing – you’ve already lost it. You may not have noticed that yet, and it may take you awhile to grieve, and then you may realize that there was never anything to lose.” Byron Katie

This paragraph popped out at me while reading last night. It will help explain how I felt. If we rewrite the paragraph replacing “thing” with the word love;

The Love you are terrified of losing – you’ve already lost it. You may not have noticed that yet, and it may take you a while to grieve, and then you may realize that there was never any LOVE to lose.

Here is the deal, I was terrified to lose the love I thought was there, and then I thought I would die when there was none there, and then I was glad that it wasn’t there, relieved that that ugliness was not my love, and then began the search for what love was.

I would walk each day, and I allowed myself to cry/grieve heading in one direction, but when I turned around I used that walk back to be of something good.

I would dream of a life away from here, the hellhole, I would ponder quilts to make, I would watch nature, the river and all it’s guests, I would talk to the clouds, sky and sun, and I would feel I was conversing with God. I had no idea of who I was, what I looked like or where I was going, lost with no real definition of love, but willing to learn.

I literally was a baby in a strange land looking at things for the first time. It seemed like a big world with lots of stuff to choose from. I could be the one to decide what meant love to me. My body and I would figure this out, and I had lived many years knowing what it wasn’t, so I did the opposite many times, when in doubt.

I have said, I have learned so much from so many people about what not to do. I had a few masters.

I recall clearly the day I was talking really loud at my husband, trying hard to convince him, “I don’t know who I am”….and I meant it, and it scared the hell out of me. Not him. He always just listened and maybe even felt I was overacting, again.

But to be a big ass lady, with kids, a mail route, etc, to not know who you are, is frightening to say the least. As I write this, what I was screaming was that without that old love inside, my inside was empty. And in order to redefine myself I had to go out and add love.

Now adding love would seem easy, but it takes time. And I had a lot of reconstruction with my relationships with those who lived with me. I had to learn how to do it differently.

I think backwards now and It is unclear how I did what I did, but it seems more like even I didn’t have a choice. Like there was a weird rulebook transcribed in me and when something happened, the book knew what to do….and I did it. My children had to be a certain way for me not to erupt. My children were ok as long as they were doing things my way. Oh, and the kids didn't have the same rulebook.

I am sure it is like living with a crazy volcano, you just never know what will send the sparks skyward, and then the children get covered in ash. I cannot change their early years, their formative years, nor even spend too much time back there, it pains me deeply that I did so much damage. However, they were Blessed with a wonderful father one who could quickly add salve to their burns. He was their saving Grace.

However, I have read and learned that I can begin new in each new situation and we learn together how a real relationship works.

Byron Katie is the teacher for me, she was the first book I clung to, “Loving What Is” She did not tell me to change anything, but just accept everything. You don’t even change your thoughts, but to question them.

I had to begin looking at my life, my world, my house, my kids, my friends, my old family, my job, everything. I had to look at all things like a quirky nature scene. And the greatest thing I had to do, was to give God back the control. For you see I thought it was up to me to direct, control, manipulate, holler, set right, tell you, a million and one things so YOU would get your life right.

I remember writing in shock that I would let God take care of others. I know it sounds mental, but let me tell you, it is wonderful not to have the pretend responsibility that you wholeheartedly believe is your job.

Little by little I was walking away and allowing others to be themselves, and if they choose to sink to the bottom, so be it. I let others make choices, and I restrained myself. I had to sometimes clamp my teeth hard, walk out of the room, or shout out what I would love to do, but it isn’t my job, and scream that I must get me right. For not only are you being presented with the perfect new lesson on giving love, you get to see what you had created without love.

You see the upside down thinking and it’s results, and my failure to have consequences. I found out my consequences were a leaky boat, wishy washy at best.

I found out as a mom, I am the consequence lady, and they are free to be themselves, and if they chose the action, I get to chose the consequence. As I became more and more into my business, they fell more in their own. Freedom to be themselves, what a gift to give your children, they get to decide who and how to be.

Love then is free. Love is being yourself, love is allowing, accepting, kindness, listening……

What else Byron Katie taught me, was the word NO! If you can’t say no, then your yes doesn’t mean anything. No is a Yes to you. My yes was to myself so I could begin filling me up with self- love!

I found the line between selfish and self- loving is slim, slight a sliver, but the ocean of difference is wide beyond measure.

Loving another should not hurt them or you. It should not require a sacrifice either way. Love sees the other. Love hears the other. Love feels the other. While still seeing, hearing, feeling you!

The dance of two…or if no one is around, it is a solo dance. A solo dance requires nothing from no one. You dance alone to the music in your heart and soul.

In our bathroom there is a plaque that says “When you Stumble, make it part of the dance.”

My dance is awkward at best, yet I am delighted to be dancing at all. So dance like no one is watching. And there are no wrong steps, as long as you are heading in the right direction.

The music you hear is the music of your soul.

Dance the solo dance of you.

 

Fearlessly

When being molested my body felt fear, but my mind called it love. So my body says fear, then how in the hell does the mind come up with the word, Love?

It seems very weird again. Like there are two witnesses to the one event? Of course if there were two steering the same boat, or fighting over which one won, it makes sense that each would see it from their point of view.

In my case, my mind was eclipsed, and that is the one who was supposed to tell me that wasn’t love. But if it doesn’t see it so it can’t record it. So we have just one witness present, my body.

My body is the witness, and the mind ran away…where, I hope it was a pleasant space, a kind and loving space, I hope that God held me then. I always knew it was a Blessing and a Curse.

But, back to the unravel….If all I have is the body fearing and the mind not knowing, would I not then be able to correctly put together what molestation is? Certainly I would get it wrong.

Now we have to both recall that I am a child. I am a little girl with no big words, or even big thoughts and surely my future only stretched out to the next day. A ‘friendly’ mask approaches, plays, teases, interacts and leads me somewhere, I go, for I have no reason to not.

I come away with fear. And since it is someone I love, I have to chalk it up to love. How else do I get the mind believing love hurts? The body is in pain, the mind is saying he loves you….Madness!

I have been beating myself up for at least 400 years, trying to understand how in the hell could I first of all not remember, and then, how I still wanted to love him and have him love me. It is like hugging a cactus and then wanting more and more and more. What is even more tragic, if that is possible, I tried harder and harder to get more love from a man who hurts me! Something was wrong with me.

 Somehow I was not good enough, not cute enough, didn’t do enough, wasn’t kind enough, it was I with the major issues.

Would the same be true for those who remember but don’t have feelings? Say their mind remembers and tells them this wonderful mixed up not even close story and they believe it.

Remember when I said, “we were left alone in our minds without adult supervision” well I know that the mind is capable of doing just that. Jill Bolte Taylor’s book “My Stroke Of Insight” brought this to my attention. Words to follow my experience.

So you have a mind that is backwards and a body that doesn’t have feelings and you keep trying WITH your mind to love someone. You never use your body for love, it has no feelings, so “your always on my mind”, is a love song, if you can’t feel your body.

This just gets crazier and crazier or messier and messier! That book about the little bird searching for her mother is no different than us searching for love.

We know that those who SAY they love us hurt us. And we believe that in order to have love we have to hurt. Or we believe that we must convince our bodies to love. So in order to love we have to work at it, show them with our bodies! While being disconnected in our heads.

If this doesn’t sound crazy to you….I will be amazed, but let me tell you it makes perfect sense to me.

 What is even more perfect it explains the phrase, “I was lost, and I was going to find myself, I didn’t know I was missing or what I even looked like.”

The greatest news to one who is abused is that they don’t know how to love, yet it is the most tragic to feel, especially if you have a husband, and say a passel of kids. You look around and cringe.

If you don’t know love, what in the hell have you been passing out as love? I looked into my bucket, the one that spilled out on the ground, and all around it were Conditions. I had a bucket full of conditions and not one was for their best interest. You could even say it was a bucket full of selfishness.

What in the hell can I do with that in my bucket? I had to begin yet again. It was like my first day trying to hand out love. I was empty and puzzled. But I was willing to try. Willing to try and fail, for I did have even more left to lose. I had a whole other family my heart could not handle to lose again.

Once again I set forth, unsteady, shaky, bewildered and without confidence, that I wouldn’t hurt someone the first time I tried. I was the cactus, prickly and poking, painful for all involved. Little by little with patience and humor on both sides, we built up enough to get a grip an inch by inch we have moved along, and again, love is never done.

We learn each day, in each new situation what love would do here, and there, and over there, and under here….there are a million ways we can show love. A million ways it doesn’t hurt. To feel love, to tentatively show love, to be without pain is beyond what my mind can hold, and I truly think the body holds love like it held fear before. There is literally no way you can hand out hurt! I love that. I am an imperfectly perfect loving woman. I do it my way. My body and my mind agree. There is only one of me in here now, no room for fear. Fearlessly I walk on.

Guest

There is natural, whole and then substitutes, substitutes for whole and natural. Is that possible? Is that right? Can you really make up a natural thing?

Sugar has many substitutes, we don’t know why. I guess real sugar was bad for us, or was it that we were bad to sugar. Bad that we ate too much! So they made it so we didn’t have to change, they changed what we ate.

Love, now can you make a substitute for that? Peace, can you make a substitute for that? Truth? Joy? I wonder how many things have no substitute?

What would be the substitute for truth? Is it a lie? No, that is the opposite?

It seems to me, there are things that have no substitute I guess they would be the absolutes. Would an absolute and a substitute be the opposites? Is there an absolute you and a substitute you?

So then there could be two of you. A real one and a fake one, excuse me “a substitute”. How do you then tell the real from the not real in you?

That seems like it would be an easy one to answer, for you live in you, you walk around as you, you talk as you, as far as you know, there is only one of you.

In many instances, with many different people, they would slip and call me by a name that is similar but not mine. And each time, they used the same ‘substitute’ name. Let’s say it is Barb. I would jokingly say that Barb was the rebel, she was the one who was my “alter ego”.

Now if you don’t know there are two of you and you walk around as one, who gets to make the choices. Who is the real driver of this boat?

In my experience the substitute rules! But, in my case the substitute is the truth. And the poster is the lie.

Hard to follow….here is the deal.

In my past I was unaware of being molested, so I walked around like an unmolested girl. Unmolested is the substitute. Molested is the truth.

So I guess the answer is the absolute and the substitute are opposites. And it seems we are either driven by one or the other. Only one driver, in the case of two, wouldn’t you have multiple personality disorder.

Disorder, something is out of order. Out of order inside of us. I believe you can have the intentions correctly in your mind, but you don’t know how to execute the plan. I believe we are utterly in disbelief when the opposite happens.

Maybe we are one person in our heads and another driving the actions or emotions? Is that possible?

I am not a scientist, a doctor, just a woman who has lived this out.

Here is what I would do. My mind would say “love your father” but my body would say, I can’t, and not do it. It was like there were two masters and you could not please either one. One was driven by fear, my body…the other was driven by outward conformities.

I was in the middle being pulled this way and that. Isn’t there a children’s song, “did you every see a Lassy go this way and that way…” I just knew I had to stop the pull, that I would only listen to one.

I chose my body. It has never let me down. It is my Temple.

I have experienced life in pain, and now I will try the opposite, I will listen to my body and follow, with no resistance, without an agenda, no plans.

My body knows the way. It naturally does, once you get dysfunction out of the way. We do not teach babies to cry or laugh….even the smallest among us know how to be a human naturally.

The Body is the truth and the way. The Intelligence that is inside is my guide. My gut reaction and I will put no other before It. I walk alone, led by the Source of Intelligence.

It can’t be taught, It can only be experienced, and sometimes, you have to go to Hell to get It. And really, It isn’t in hell, but it gets you through it.

Isn’t there another child’s song, “you can’t go around it, you can’t go over it, you can’t go under it, you have to go right through it.” Through it doesn’t mean you have to get comfortable there, you are just a guest in Hell.

A Guest is not the owner of, but one who comes to visit!

 

See

In love with a Mask, that line stuck with me, and made my actions have words that match. I have words for my actions. It seems I am going backwards, paying more attention to the action, the feelings, and just leaving the words out of it.

Do Masks talk? Do Masks think? Is a mask really a filter that disguises the voice? Can you have a full body masks? Can it mask your actions, or does it mask your intentions, can it? Where does reality stand with the Masks?

 Are the Masks part of reality, the illusion, the play within a play? What is going On?

If I look back at my father’s trail, I would have to say, that there were two sides. One side, the Defense argued the side of the Mask. The other side was the Prosecutors and they argued the side of the man behind the mask. Who argued for the child? Did the judge? Did the Detective watch the child, who was watching the child?

This just gets weirder and weirder.

The greater part of the family loved the mask, and would then have to sit on the side of the Defense. They were defending the mask. You seem to defend what you love. But what happens to the children who don’t? Don’t what? In the beginning of the mask falling even, I intuitively knew, that you only got to pick one. Pick one. The mask or what lay beneath.

Now, wouldn’t it be cozier to pick the mask, but what happens if you feared the mask. What happens if when the mask fell, you knew it was perfect, now the feelings matched the man behind the mask? The mask did not hurt you, the mask did not scare you, the mask was warm cozy and your friend, the mask, oh my God that damn mask.

It was such a twisted father. There is song line “a walking contradiction, partly truth and partly fiction” that refrain kept running through my mind. The contradiction is my world, without memory, the fear that raced through my body in his presence, seemed the traitor. The fear was not matching the mask. My body held back, not only a little, but always. Like it protected me when my mind tried very hard to change my actions. I couldn’t, so I became the failure, I became the cold-hearted daughter. I became the monster in the family, for I could not love the mask. I tried. I tried. Oh, my mind could pretend I did, my mind could do all kinds of tricks, but my body held fast.

This big ass body I like to say, remembered for 40 years the deeds done to it by a man behind the mask. What a terrific instrument this body is. I have read since that the body doesn’t lie. I didn’t need the book I was a living testament to that.

Even this blog, which I am not sure most of you have figured out, but this blog is the words to actions I have already done. Somehow the words on the paper have a way of validating my actions, of giving me a voice. This blog has taken a path of it’s own, I surely don’t know where we are going, but the truth is leading the way.

For this I know for sure, there is very little support for the girl who won’t love the mask, stands firm with her conviction that the man behind the mask is reality.

The detective came into my home, he asked me many questions. I had a few for him too. He asks “I hope this won’t affect the relationship you have with your father”….If that is his hope, then I knew it was hopeless.

A little girl sits. A little girl sits and watches. A little girl sits and watches the adults come in and waits to see what will happen. Will they too see a monster? Will they? Or will they too be fooled. There are two of us sitting.

The monster sits too. The monster waits too. The monster sits and waits to see if he has fooled them too. We both sit and we both wait. But in the end, the girl sits alone.

Alone, silent, wounded, unheard, unseen, confused, responsible, puzzled, she sits. She sits in a world that doesn’t make sense.

I asked Mr. Detective man, “Can you give me one common denominator between a father and a pedophile?” That was my question to Mr. Detective man and he was silent, I told Mr. Detective man, to call me when he had one. Just one. And so far no call.

Now I ask you, is there a common denominator, can you find one for me?

Somehow, the little girl feels responsible for tearing off the kind mask. It is our fault for making the monster roar. What did my do?

What did my do? I wrecked our family, I trashed our dreams, I brought the filth forth, I couldn’t pretend, couldn’t play games, for it was the games that started this whole mess.

Somebody started to pretend. Who and why? In fact it seems there are more pretending than being real.

The detective pretends to investigate, but his investigation leads to me…..why I asked, are you not talking to him? The Prosecutors pretends he can keep little girls safe, but he offers a deal to set him free. The Judge pretends he can be fair, Impossible this will never be fair.

When I watched my experience as I experienced it, the incredulousness of it all, became like a really bad comedy, with the truth indeed being stranger than fiction. Masks of Perfection….Masks pretending.

I however refused to wear one, nope, none. Not even for my sisters, my brothers, my mother, my father, my children, no one could make me, none.

You would think, that those who are standing alone, naked, with soiled underwear would be cheered it has not been my experience.

A few very brave souls walked in, friends with great courage.

Many want me to shush, to cover up, even me….for I didn’t want you to change your mind about me. I didn’t want you to think less of me, to not see me, to let me sit alone.

I had always wanted the book of proper etiquette for little girls who are standing naked, and I can only hope, that by my speaking out, little girls will not have to go through what I did.

I do not blame you all, I really don’t. I am just curious, confused and saddened. I know we are hard to look at, even if we appear normal. For you too can sense the presence behind my mask of normal. It is strong it is steady, it is reality, harsh, unkind, brutal, but real, mixed in with love and peace and hope.

I now know what a handicapped person feels….

Please don’t turn away.

See.

Ride Naked

Who puts Perfect in us?  What makes us Perfect?  Who are the Perfect maker people, where do we find them and how does it work?

And how do we know we need Perfect, how do we know we are missing Perfect? 

 

It seems that all are seeking Perfect?  It seems that it is the prize and I want to know where is the Perfect store, the place where all Perfect is stored, I want to fill up on Perfect, for without it seems we are doomed for failure, failure without Perfect.

 

Perfect, boy for such a nice word, it sure causes a hell of a lot of grief, we lose ourselves for it, we cry for it, we die for it, we kill for it, we lie for it, we steal for it, my God, it seems to be a motive for a life of hell.

 

And I am not swearing just to be dramatic, I literally mean hell, if you are not Perfect you are in hell.  And if you let go of that word, Heaven!

That now seems mental, and upside down and backwards, for all our lives ever since were little, Perfect was what we wanted.

 

Perfect baby, Perfect girl, Perfect mom, Perfect wife, Perfect friend, million and one Perfects!  Until Perfect stands before us, always, and not just sometimes, like we can’t see us for the forest of Perfects.

 

How in the world have we gotten lost behind Perfects?  Lost behind Perfects, so we are there, just that Perfect is standing in the way?

Who put it there? How long has it been standing there?  And why do we want to hide behind Perfects?  Why?

 

We hide ourselves behind Perfect, so Perfect is a mask?

The mask is Perfect? That is the mask? We pretend to be Perfect?

That doesn’t seem right, but true.

 

WE hide behind the Mask of Perfect…so Perfect is not real?

Perfect is not real?  How in the world did we go seeking something that is not real?  Not real?

 

So what is real? If the mask is pretend, fake, untrue, and it’s name is Perfect, than what does that make us behind the mask of Perfect?

Just us.  Just us being ourselves, what is wrong with ourselves?

Who told us we could not be ourselves?

Who wanted us to be different and why?

Where did this all start, what is wrong with being you?

 

Somewhere along the way, we had to hide behind the mask of Perfect, somewhere we had to pretend.  Someone didn’t like us as we were, why?  What happened that they didn’t want to see?

 

It is shocking even as I write this to see that Perfection is a screen to hide behind!  I knew I was ok as an imperfect person, but now I am way way way ok!

 

For now I know that my mask is no longer needed, for I am ok without it.  I stand alone, mask-less and proud. 

 

Our El Camino has a window sticker “Ride Naked” and I loved that saying from the beginning and now I know what it truly means, ride without a mask!  And get this, my license plate says UBEEU, ride naked and you be you….

 

When my parent’s masks fell, so did my world, for I was in love with their perfections, not the person behind.  Imagine I was in love with a mask.  A mask, and I wanted this mask to change, to do this and do that and to love me back.  Oh my Goodness this is good.

 

No wonder I made sense when their mask fell, for I never fit the mask!  My mask. 

 

A mask of Perfection….that will stay with me awhile.

 

Standing here naked and imperfect!

 

 

 

Fashioner

In a split second, you can go from being a little girl to being a mom. It happens so fast, I am not sure we even have the time to think about it. It happens to some and I believe others missed the portal. But the portals open up each day and in many situations.

As life moves along, we can have children, but that doesn’t make us a mom. The saying “anyone can be a father, but it takes someone special to be a dad”, should also be true of mothers. Moms are not a given.

Little girls do not grow up dreaming of being a bad mom, especially if they have been victims of one. Yet some how the pattern is laid out we follow almost like robots without a choice. Born into a legacy, we either follow or get out. It is in the little seconds, the little moments that we can correct the legacy. It is little by little we become a mom. And if we string enough of the mom moments together, we become more a mom than a mother.

It takes time, it takes patience, it takes learning, growing, unlearning, undoing. Taking family traditions that have been handed down generation to generation. We are literally trying to turn lifetimes of patterns and bringing in new at the same time. It is best not to think out long and far and to look too long behind you, but instead just be in this moment, with this choice, with this child, on this day, in this hour, facing this minute.

You are the Fashioner of a new life pattern.

In this now moment, give space, stop and see, ask and not react, drop the preconceived ideas of the outcome. And here’s a good one, “think before you speak” or in my case stop before you holler! In each split second, you and you alone get to decide which will I be here, the child or the mom.

I learned I had all I could handle  was just focusing on being a mom. It was a really hard job. They got to be the kids, and I played the mom. I would speak it out loud. “I am the mom, the consequence person, you be you and I will deal.” I literally had to turn myself into a mom. One choice, one minute at time. And I am still not done. I think it takes a lifetime to become a mom.

The greatest news is that I stepped out alone, daring to walk out of the legacy and into a new place. Here we are free, no rules, no patterns, free space to be. I love not knowing how to do it right! For if this felt comfortable, I would be back in the legacy of my youth. So the more you need to change, the more uncomfortable you will feel, it is a good thing in a bad way!

It was like throwing the old mom out, and to be truthful, I hated being her too, and now I get to be a new mom. My oldest daughter has said, “it is like getting a new mom without a divorce” and that is literally the truth.

Most people try and change the outside to correct the inside. That is like asking the child to make you a better mom, and we do it, over and over again.

Byron Katie says, “There are only three types of business, yours, mine and Gods. If you are in my business, who is in yours?

Being in my business is a full time job! One I gladly suffer, for I was out this job for a long long time. I am happy to be employed full time. I am elated to just doing me. That is simply all I am responsible for!

An imperfect mother now and forever, for my past I cannot change, but my future is mine to design. Oh what shall I be?  The what fills me with potential, with hope, for you see, it wasn't that long ago I had no choice.  I am grateful beyond measure to have walked free, to dream the impossible dream. A mom, a loving mom, can it be?  Oh simply just watch me....piece by piece, inch by inch, and one day we will both be surprised how this ends.  It is up to me, I am the Fashioner of my life.

Beauty

The Island of Misfit Toys was the place in Rudy the Red Nosed Reindeer story. The place toys went that had been created wrong.  I can’t recall each misfit, but their action didn’t do as the fit ones did.

Yet on the Island, if you had a problem you fit right in, perfect.

Hey, you could have called it the Island of Imperfection.

The natives on the island expected, loved, understood, you, and your quirky nature.

It is unclear in my mind why this Island appears in the story…but I know we are taken there and shown around.

Maybe it was to show we all belong somewhere.  I felt sad for those left on the island of misfit toys, like no way could then fit in on the Island of Normal. 

How this appeared to me today, was that I was thinking of how my husband has the knack for fixing things that are broken, missing a part, in long neglect disrepair, a car or lawnmower that most would put in the junk yard, my husband takes home.

He has the patience of a saint, can see the potential and works little by little to bring it back into its original state.  We have seen many transformations that his hands have made.  And we have seen him milk along vehicles that truly are tired, worn down and ready to rest.

Just when you think, he can’t possible make it run again, he does.

We are forever sentenced to a life with a car for he won’t let it go, until he is certain it has lived its full life.

I know this may sound beautiful, but try riding around in a car that has more overused parts than new.  We have cars where, you have to remember to not put down the window…..that is right.  Don’t push the power button, or when you do, the window will fall quickly down into the door and disappear and it will take him many hours to get it back up.  So you have a window that goes down, but not up.  You don’t know how instinctual it is to just hit the button, mindlessly.

We once had one of these kinds of cars stolen, yes stolen.  The most expensive part on the car, was the full tank of Gas, oh and my stamps on the visor.  We cheered and laughed and were so gleeful, it is gone, but lo and behold by the end of the day, it was back in our yard.  It was found just a few miles away, undamaged, or so we think.  We couldn’t really tell what damage was new, for who remembered all it’s bumps and bruises.

You almost feel sad that one so damaged has so much damage that you can’t even see the new bruise.  And does the car get used to being so precariously balanced, or does it too feel….I will move today if I can and if not I will just stop.  It is not up to me.

Does the car remember being young, shining, new all things working, where it could breeze along the road happily!  Does it remember no dents and dings no overused parts?  Does it wish to go backwards, does it dream of a fixer-upper man?  Does it wait to die in the junkyard? Is there a heaven for cars?  Just so you know my husband shops in the junkyards, seeking that one part that still is good.

Now as I look back at my life, I can see why I married this man.

I was the perfect wife for him.

 

One man’s junk is another man’s treasure.

They say we marry the person who can heal your childhood wounds I for one know that is true.  He brought out in me the things that needed correcting.  You may recognize the ‘buttons’ that we seem to be able to push in each other, those are buttons of dysfunction.

A place where we have lost our power, a place where we have a wrong connection, a button that doesn’t do what it is supposed to do.

For some of us, we have been broken for sooo long we don’t even know what the normal function looks like, feels like or would recognize it.  Our normal is dysfunction.  We have lived so long on the Island of Misfits, that that is normal.

It isn’t until you leave the island that you look down and see. See the damage, the brokenness, uselessness abounds.  And is it possible for one misfit to fix another misfit, or do we need a fixer man.

But always remember, “One Man’s Junk, Is Another Man’s Treasure”

I should know. 

I have been both.

Beauty truly is in the eye of the beholder.