IMPERFECT Lady

Alive but unaware!

What an incredible ride, what an awe-inspiring journey, I feel an immense amount of gratitude to be given the opportunity to live beyond the bubble, to find a life outside of denial.

 

Unless and until you have been totally snowed under by a false belief, where you and reality are an ocean apart, you will not understand the enormity of dissolving denial.

 

First of all you are the one standing neck deep in denial, and it is from there that you have to dig yourself out, not knowing what is real; your denial or reality. 

 

When I began this journey, when my bubble burst, I thought my reality changed, when in actuality it was my denial that had sprung a leak or collapsed, leaving me without protection.

 

My husband said that I was like a scared rabbit, and I was.  I had no place to hide, to run to or escape, all I saw was the harsh reality in front of me.

 

Actions that I had previously denied stood enormously obvious!  I had no choice now but to see and to feel what each action felt like.

 

Living with all your nerves exposed, with no shield to protect you, a turtle without its shell.

 

What I believe is while you are in denial; you deny your emotions a life.  You can’t feel them.  They don’t exist in the bubble, for that is why we built the bubble to escape feelings; they were far to terrifying to feel.

 

Emotionally immature is how we get left. 

 

We left our emotions behind and our bodies grew. 

 

Emotionally stunted we live awkwardly in this world.

 

The picture I now have, the overview and the application of denial, the land that we build and live in, leaves me in utter disbelief.

 

Abuse while hurtful to the physical body, is nothing compared to being sentenced into the land of denial.

 

What I am now seeing is that some get a life sentence and some 40 plus years. 

 

I do not know what makes the denial bubble burst, how some have a stronger bubble than others, but denial is built from the inside out and I am thinking that it is the only way out.

 

The one who built it is the one who takes it down.

 

I sit in awe, I sit in gratitude, I sit in reality bubble-less.

 

The definition of denial, refusal to acknowledge existence of something: a refusal to believe in something or admit that something exists.

 

What we have to admit to is the bubble we live in and not the reality that has always been there.

 

What we ultimately deny is our self.

 

Alive but unaware, that is denial!

 

Balloon of Dreams!

“Walking against the dream…” came to me in yoga, that why it has been such a struggle, I am walking the opposite of my dreams.

 

The dream was born with abuse, and what we cling to with our lives is the dream.

 

A dream that is opposite of reality, a dream of denial, a dream of illusion, a dream, a figment of our imagination.

 

My dream began as a very young girl, I lived in that dream, that dream was more than my reality.  It was warm and cozy, loving and caring, a blanket that kept out the ugly truths.

 

What I failed to realize is that walking in reality wasn’t as hard as destroying the dream.

 

The dream was more precious to me than reality.

 

The dream was where I was loved, where I was good enough, where I mattered, ‘to them’.

 

I worked hard to keep that dream alive and now in the past five years I was working hard to destroy my lovingly safe place.

 

It is shocking to know this, and incredible to realize that denial is the dream.

 

The word denial being a dream land didn’t penetrate into me, that the application of this is to be living in and breathing in, a space that is loving cozy and warm while interacting in real life with the opposite.

 

Denial is a balloon, a bubble that floats above reality.  I was a bubble girl!

 

What I realized in yoga as I thought of the quilt I made with the little girl and her balloon, is that on the quilt there are beads running up into the balloon, and now I know those beads are tears.

 

When you shed enough tears, the balloon breaks like a water balloon bursts.

 

It leaves you naked, no blanky to cover with, nothing to hide under, you are left with a broken balloon of dreams.

 

Letting It Go!

Acceptance and I are staring at each other; it dangles both pain and freedom.  I see the two sides and feel caught in between, stuck standing still.

 

I see with big lady intellect and with little girl dreams, I feel the struggles between them.

 

The lady’s wise words and focus on actions fall on the little girl’s deaf ears. 

 

Or perhaps I don’t want to be the one to end the little girls dreams, to crash and burn her long wait, to give her nothing but acceptance.

 

Acceptance, hollow, empty, cold and unloving.

 

Can I break my little girls heart?  Is it my only heart?

 

Acceptance shatters all dreams.

Acceptance makes daddy’s monsters forever.

Acceptance makes moms cold and distant, always.

Acceptance hurts in reality.

 

I always thought what I feared most was my mental lady, instead what I feared the most was the shattered spirit of the hopeful dreaming little girl.

 

To live empty, hollow, forsaken, alone, cold and hurt a girl with broken dreams.

Is it possible to separate the little girl from her dreams, to untangle the loveless dream and set her free?

 

To let the dream go, like a flyaway balloon…

 

But keep the little girl spirit, her optimism, and her dreaming quality?

 

My little girl survived holding on to that dream.

 

And now her survival depends on her letting it go!

 

 

I know God will not give me anything I can't handle.  I just wish that He didn't trust me so much. 

 ~Mother Teresa

The Cost of my Peace!

I finally figured out what I can’t accept in having to accept.

 

I can’t accept that someone can’t change.

 

And I guess that is not the meaning of acceptance.  I want acceptance with a clause.

 

I want to accept who you are, but that you can change.

 

This is incredibly insane. 

This isn’t acceptance it’s conditional acceptance.

 

It seems to be hopeless to accept others as they are.

I am not sure if you can follow this, but in my head it makes sense as to why I am forever waiting and hoping, for I believe to the depth of my being that changes are possible.

 

Even if the other person has yet to make one step, I am of thinking, ‘they can’.

 

Yet can they?

 

It almost seems like I have to become a pessimist or at very least, a realist and see who they are, not their potential with change.

 

Imagine, “their potential with change” that is so not accepting who they are in this moment, but dreaming and believing that who they are isn’t who they want to be.

 

Instead who they are ISN’T who I want them to be.

 

I want them to be different.

I want them to change to satisfy my ideas of what would make them a better this or a better that.

 

This is an ongoing problem with me living in the land of potential changes, instead of being real right now.

 

It is what it is.  I had said a million times.  But what I felt is, ‘it is what it is, until it isn’t’!

 

Living in a hopeful state that someone will change, leaves you feeling hopeless.

 

Somehow I have to work on accepting others not ever changing, and by seeing it is I with the problem, not them. 

 

They are quite happy being as they are.

As Byron Katie says, “who are you to ruin a good buzz, they are happy drinking!”

 

I am the one that struggles with accepting that they are okay where they are, that they have no thoughts of changing, and have told me so repeatedly in words, thoughts and deeds!

 

UGH.

 

This will sit with me today.

I accept who they are, but that they can change.

Which is totally counterintuitive!

 

I will only accept what is if what is changes!

 

It would be funny if it wasn’t such a tragedy and if it hadn’t cost me so much peace.

 

Believing in changes at the cost of my peace!

 

 

Wrong Places.

"Love is the ability and willingness to allow those that you care for to be what they choose for themselves without any insistence that they satisfy you" Dr. Wayne W. Dyer

 

 

What I want to know is what will satisfy me as far as my mother goes?

 

Funny, I thought I would be satisfied if she were to show all who she is, now today, and who she was all those years ago.  For her to show her insanity.

 

She can’t be more visible, yet unseen! 

 

What I failed to appreciate is that what I call insanity some see as sane! 

 

Her actions are typical for her, so they see that their world hasn’t changed, they see their normal mom. 

 

They find comfort in her unchanging ways.

 

What leaves me breathless is that no one seems to care that she is staying in the same house with my father, the pedophile.  That this choice of hers isn’t insane.

 

Their fabulous mother is simply stopping off in Dallas for a spell.  A normal event in their lives.

 

How can your really overlook, look pass and around the fact that her husband wounded so many little girls?

 

How is she not seen as insane or incredibly blind and disconnected for being able to be in the same space as him? 

 

Two birds of the same feathers…

 

My inability to shed a glimmer of light to show how off base her actions are leave me voiceless.

 

How in the hell can I utter one word that will outshine her very own actions?

 

Sadly being satisfied that your mother is insane doesn’t feel good, knowing that she is okay with the man who raped you leaves you reeling in thoughts and feelings.

 

I wonder if us kids of incest are forever seeking to be satisfied in a way that is impossible to have?

 

Is our own sanity jepordized by the fact that we still want something from our insane parents?

 

Isn’t insanity trying to fix a problem at the same level at which it was created? (Einstien)

 

If my satisfaction will only come when my insane parents make sane moves, I will be forever waiting.

 

Accepting their insanity has been the hardest thing to do.

 

Or is accepting that no loves lives there…

 

Perhaps we are always on the look out for that little drop of love, just one little tiny dot.

 

And all we see is more and more reasons how they don’t.

 

How sad we subconsciously are waiting in hope.

 

“Looking for love in all the wrong places….”

 

A broken Heart.

Remnants of a long conversation linger in my head, dragging out more ideas and different slants on fear, truth and death.

 

I wonder what some would fear most, facing their truths or facing their deaths.

 

If you truths were real vanilla and uneventful, of course death would loom large and scary, but what if your past was scarier?

 

What if you were being asked to look upon a past filled with trauma, then how would your death look?

 

Death seems like an escape hatch a welcome slide into oblivion, compared to having to feel, deal and heal a wound of abnormal proportions.

 

Today I was exploring the depths of psychosomatic symptoms in the body and this is what I read.

 

“Yet even when a patient accepts their symptom is being caused by an emotion—an exceptionally difficult barrier to surmount—the trauma that caused the symptom in the first place is often shown to be so ugly that both patient and doctor can readily understand why the patient’s mind converted it into a physical symptom in the first place:  even the mind itself believed the emotional trauma to be easier to handle that way. 

Physical symptoms often get better with a pill.  Emotional traumas often take years to heal—if even then.  The technology we have to heal the scars caused by some traumas—as advanced and helpful as psychology can be—still lags behind the technology we have to treat ailments with purely physical causes.

But we shouldn’t be discouraged.  We may all experience psychosomatic symptoms to some degree, but when our symptoms are shown to be so and we accept it, that acceptance becomes the most important step toward resolving them.  After all, how can we find a contact lens we lost by looking near a lamppost when we lost it in the shadows?  The real work begins, of course, once we start looking in the right place.  Dealing with somatization only requires us to bring to the table one quality:  courage.” (Alex Lickerman)

 

Isn’t it amazing that the mind can convert trauma into a physical symptom?

How interesting to read and understand more how emotional trauma affects the body.

And I love how courage is what we need to bring to the table. 

Courage. 

Courage to face our truths, our past and our hurts, and especially if the truth hurts the images we held of our family.

Courage, wow, I think they forgot a broken heart.

 

Ladies empowering Ladies!

In her book, “The Woman’s Book of Creativity” C Diane Ealy writes.

 

“The expression of woman’s creativity is crucial to our development as self-defined individuals who understand that real power is having power over ourselves.  This knowledge negates the old notion of power as something held over someone else. Creative women are strong women who empower others through their creativity.”

 

I love this. 

 

Not only do I feel stronger doing yoga daily, but I am also feeling stronger in self, and if that is from being more creative, I am way excited.

 

Imagine that I am becoming more powerful as I play with fabric, designs and being creative with my Ladies. 

 

This has to be why it was so important to me when I was so lost that I felt such a draw to be creative.  It was the one thing I held on to tightly, subconsciously I knew this was where I grew stronger.

 

I love that my creative ladies empower other ladies…what a great energy flow!

 

Ladies empowering Ladies!

I love it.

Love and control only me!

I have had a lot of changes in the past five and a half years, and all of them have been perception changes, changes that had nothing to do with the other person, in fact I have changed no one, nor do I want to.

 

While my life has changed dramatically, those who I now see differently didn’t change, I just changed the way I look at them.

 

I am not certain if this makes sense to anyone but me, but it so wonderful to know that our job isn’t about doing work on other people, bending and twisting them into something that will make our lives better and then us better.

 

We can make us better without any help from anyone; it is a one-person job.  You do it alone.

 

Most of the work was done on looking at others in their reality, and then deciding upon if I wanted to participate in their lives.

 

Giving myself the option to go in or get out, freed me in ways that’s unimaginable. 

 

My reality went from needing others to do this and to do that, to wanting them this way and then that way, I was forever sitting down waiting for them to change, to be better, grow kinder and for sure see me waiting.  Always sitting helpless and hopeless and stuck on one level waiting, it was like they had the controls to my elevator!

 

They controlled me until I realized I had a choice.

 

Most will not take the choice when it is a parent or family member that has been at the controls of your elevator. 

 

Somehow it seems less scary to ride along out of control, than it is to take control back from your parent.

 

We believe that the mother/father whose hands are on the controls, love and control us.

 

Now the words love and control going together seems way wrong. 

 

What happened to the “if you love something, set it free…” quote.

 

The most loving thing I did for myself was to learn how to control my own self.

 

I was like a remote control toy finding out I could control myself.

 

Imagine living a life where others controlled you to living a life where you controlled your self?

 

The difference is so vast, and all that happened was I took over controlling this unit.

 

Love and control only me!

 

 

 

Chain of Co-dependency

“The moment a child is born, the mother is also born.  She never existed before.  The woman existed, but the mother, never.  A mother is something absolutely new. “          

~Rajneesh

 

It is incredible that a mother is born the same day a child is born, that is all it takes to be a mom.  Most never stop to think that we are handing over children to be mothered by someone who has never mothered!  Up and until then she was just a woman.

 

And this woman is now in charge of another being beside herself. 

 

We mother from the self we are.

 

The same woman who arrives at the hospital to have a baby is the same one that mothers; we are not given any magic potion to make us a mother. 

 

How I treated myself, how I was in relationships, was how I mothered.  I mothered with that same self.

 

I simply didn’t have a separated self that mothered.  I mothered as me!

 

All my deficiencies fell onto my children, all my fears trickled into their worlds, and my insecurities were filled by how they behaved.

 

To totally raise a child that is balanced and independent, you yourself need to be balanced and independent.

 

My co-dependent nature didn’t allow them to be separated from me.  I had a voice in every choice they made.

It was like we were the oddest set of Siamese twins.

 

Attached by an emotional dysfunctional tether, like a layer of skin we lived in each other’s lives connected always by how the other behaved, how they felt affected us, very little degree of separation.

 

Somehow subconsciously I was weaving us together to be totally dependent upon the other, which deprived both of us from living independent strong lives.

 

It was scary cutting the ties and letting go of control and not being the most important voice in their lives, and allowing them to be themselves, but I did it.

 

Instead I focused all my attentions on my self and learning how to mother, or more importantly how to be a strong separated self.

 

It is incredible to me how we focus on the children, how we want the children to be this and that, so than we can claim we were a good parent.

 

If you instead focus on the parent, you will see that the lacks in the child all are flowing from the parent.

 

They are as strong as our weakest link.

 

It is easier to blame the child than it is to fix our weak link.

 

I had many weak links, a chain that was falling apart.

 

Each time I repaired a section; I give my child another link to freedom and self worth.

 

My chain and my legacy pattern are to be a separated self and to break the chain of co-dependency.

 

Keepers of Our Lives!

Today I watched Chip Conley speaking about measuring what makes life worthwhile on the Ted Conference, www.ted.com

 

And it has me pondering...

 

How do we count a good life?

What do we use as ruler?

What do you put in the plus column and what is dumped in the minus?

Does your life ledger hold more assets or liabilities?

 

My worthwhile column holds so many items too many to count, it is simply overflowing.

 

What I am finding is that even my minuses make it to the plus column, for they deliver me lessons which turn out to be great gifts in learning how to live a better life.

 

Measuring life by how I feel, how alive and inspired, how connected and aware I am, are my greatest measurement for worthwhile ness. 

 

Each day is a new page in the ledger book of Life. 

 

We move about our days adding and subtracting from each column.

 

Saying yes or no is how we move about this page, what we spend our time doing, how we engage in the world, who we interact with, where we go and what we do.

 

We are the pencil and the one who keeps the tally, the scorekeeper of our lives. 

 

We place the value on things; we decide into which column our life moments will go.

 

It is finding the silver lining in the clouds of life that keep us from chalking off minuses.

 

As keepers of our ledgers, we are keepers of our lives!