IMPERFECT Lady

Learning Life by Soul

Here is another section of Kim Rosen’s book, “Saved by a Poem” that I loved.

“Have you ever had the experience of a friendship or a romance where it seemed like life had finally brought you the perfect person, whose tastes and beliefs and dreams matched yours, whom you were so connected with that you didn’t even have to speak? And then, after a month or three of this Eden, you inevitably began to realize your differences. It turned out that when it came right down to it, he didn’t actually share the same beliefs as you, and what matter most to you made him very nervous. Maybe she seemed to like your kind of music in the beginning, but later admitted it gave her the creeps. Suddenly one morning you wake up, look your beloved in the face and say, “Who are you? You weren’t like this when we fell in love!”

At this point, the difference is sometimes too great to survive. You separate from each other. Or you deaden the aliveness of the relationship, relegating your togetherness to what small corner of the connection does not rock the boat.

If you hand in there without fleeing or numbing your heart you may discover more about who you really are than you ever imagined. Your beliefs may be shaken and your masks may crumble. You might discover a connection with your partner that is not contingent on harmony and agreement.

The same is true of a relationship with a poem. If you are willing to get curious about what is triggering your judgments instead of abandoning the poem or changing it to fit your comfort zone, you may find that the very lines that give you trouble hold the key to undiscovered layers of your own nature.

Gina’s favorite poem was from Rilke’s Book of Hours. She carried it on a tattered index card in her purse and often pulled it out to read to friends. She was excited about deepening her relationship with it and came to my workshop with the intention of doing so.

But as she began the process, she balked. Suddenly she decided she didn’t like the poem anymore. Another poem, Robert Frost’s “West-running Brook,” got very attractive to her. “The whole song of that poem is rushing through me,” she said. “I can’t concentrate on the Rilke.” She felt torn, drawn to the Frost poem but trapped by her commitment to the Rilke, even though she was no longer in love with it.

She could have been describing a romantic struggle. She admitted that this feeling of being torn was a familiar refrain in her life, played out again and again in her relationships with men: as soon as the time came to do the work of going deeper, someone else showed up who became very compelling.

I asked Gina where she was stuck in the Rilke poem. She pointed to the lines “Each thing -/ each stone, blossom, child-/ is held in place.”

“Was that your experience as a child?” I asked.

“No. I didn’t feel held. Each stone, blossom, child is not held in place,” she whimpered. “The poem is lying!” She and I both knew this was a deeply buried voice, drawn to surface by the poem.

“Why did you originally love this poem?” I asked her.
“Because I so long to be held like that. I long for that feeling of being safe on earth. But right now, I don’t believe in it.” She was choking back sobs. “I was so alone as a child. My great uncle abused me and nobody knew. I felt like I was living behind an invisible shield. My mom didn’t notice because she was so self-involved and distracted. I ended up taking care of her, hoping I could make her strong enough to take care of me.”

Gina was rocking back and forth, her own arms wrapped tightly around her.

“To really make this poem your own,” I said to her, “you may need to let yourself go through these feelings. Are you willing?”

Reluctantly Gina began to repeat the line over and over. At first we could barely hear her. But as she allowed the waves of pain to come to surface, her voice became stronger.

“It’s true, I have such a longing to be ‘held in place’ by something bigger than me,” she whispered. “I want to know what Rilke felt when he wrote this line.”

“So I invite you to be ‘held in place’ by your commitment to this poem. Don’t get distracted like your mother did. Don’t go off to another poem. Hold yourself right here, as a healing to the unheld one within you.”

Even through her tears, Gina knew that this poem was the exact medicine she needed to heal the heartbroken child who was so disillusioned by what had happened to her. She had unconsciously prescribed it for herself. Now it was drawing out a trauma that had been buried since she was very young. And even as this poem opened Gina’s wound, it gave her the perfect balm to heal it.

Kim Rosen

The line I love is I ended up taking care of her, hoping I could make her strong enough to take care of me.

This is the ditch that most abused victims fall into, where they are diligently caring for people in order for them to eventually become strong enough to take care of us, become our heroes, bring us the love we know is there IF only they were strong enough to show it.

Imagine the little one trying to take care of the adult, while the child needs to be held in place by someone bigger.

The world is a scary place where you the child is the caretaker.

Love this book….

She speaks of the poems first settling in the mind being memorized, then moving into the heart and then unearthing feelings deep within, speaking the soul’s language.

During my journey I too felt that I would get things first in my head, then my heart would recognize it, and then finally my soul resounded in knowing.

She calls this knowing them by heart.

I feel I am knowing life by soul.

Strings to my Respond Ability.

324 days have passed so far this year, and I have done yoga for 319 of them, and it has taken this long to wrestle free my backwards sense of Respond- Ability.

I am almost 52 years old, and I am just now feeling to the depth of each cell that I have the ability to respond freely.

That I have wiggle free and have sprouted a new sense of freedom that is as big as the Universe, like I have climbed out of a long long dark tunnel where I had little room to express my free will.

The ability to be free to respond is the death of a victim and the birth of a survivor and even bigger than that, a second birth of me.

A me that will stand tall and strong in my ability to respond, no matter what happens I can respond in kind.

I didn’t know that feeling responsible for others and the feelings I was betraying them was a huge red flag waving inside of me, screaming…you are being victimized again.

Each and every time I beat myself up inside for being irresponsible, it was wrong, I should have been cheering each and every time I had the ability to respond from the inside out, instead of pleasing the outside folks.

This has to be my main vein and the toughest one to overcome, the ‘feelings’ of guilt when I did for me and not for them, when I responded to the voice inside, to the little girl’s spirit, to the essence of who I am.

It was like there were dueling responses inside and one would affect the outside attention the other inside.

I used to be whore for anyone outside of me, and I was bought cheap and sold my inside happiness for a smile and approval while inside the spirit of me shriveled up.

What I also thought of today, is that I have been watching the wrong window, waiting for cheers from the people who are not cheering me on, while not paying adequate attention to the wonderful strong wise folks who are.

Inside of me my responsibility thirst was seeking approval from the wrong side, and I failed to appreciate the loud cheers from those cheering on my little girl, by brave woman, my new self.
The time has come to gather with like minds, join the spirits of those who know my journey and are walking with me and letting go of the sense of guilt that I wasn’t able to respond to their needs, for their needs are not mine to attend to.

I love that I am allowed to just attend to me.
I respond for just me.
I act for just me.
I move for just me.
I dance for just me.
I sing for me, talk, walk and be just for me.

I am no longer a puppet on the string, a victim, where all my responses were for the one pulling on the string!

No more strings to my respond ability!

The Journey....

In Kim Rosen’s book, “Saved by a Poem” she writes,

“ I discovered how the separating lines of culture and age can dissolve in the presence of a poem the first time I went to Africa. In Kenya, at the Tasaru Ntomonok Rescue Centre for Girls in the Rift Valley, I unexpectedly found myself speaking a poem to a group of Maasai girls, only a few hours after I met them. I had long wanted to visit this miraculous place, ever since it was opened by Eve Ensler and her organization V-Day in collaboration with Agnes Pareyio, a Maasai woman who dedicates her life to stopping the practice of female genital mutilation (FGM). Tasaru, also called the V-Day Safe House, was created as a haven for girls escaping FGM. Fifty or so girls live at the house at any given time. Each has had to leave her family and community. Many have traveled alone for miles, barefoot over rough roads, spending nights hiding under the bushes for fear of being found by wild animals.
My first few hours there were awkward. My shyness kept me from striking up conversations with the girls, most of whom though they understood English, did not speak it willingly. They were shy with me too, keeping their distance and watching me in twos and threes, whispering in Maa (the language of the Maasai) and giggling.

Finally I decided to go over to the kitchen, where I heard a lively singing as a group cooked ugali (Porridge made of cornmeal) and cabbage over an open fire. I listened outside as the last song dissolved into gales of laughter and a cacophony of exclamations in Maa. But the chatter instantly hushed when I walked in. A tall girl who spoke excellent English came up to me and stood directly in front of me: “Do you remember my name?”

I didn’t. I had been introduced to about 20 girls in the last couple of hours and could not for the life of me remember which beautiful Maasai face went with which name.
“Salula?” I asked sheepishly, grabbing the only name I remembered. “No!” The girls shrieked with laughter at what must have been a big mistake on my part. “That is Salula!” They pointed at one of the youngest girls, who had arrived at the Safe House only months before at the age of 9, having been rescued in the midst of a forced marriage to a 42 year-old man.

“I am Jecinta.” The tall girl spoke to me with exaggerated patience, as if to a two year old. “Do you know any songs?” Clearly she was giving me an opportunity to redeem myself.

“I know some songs,” I said. “But what I really love most is poetry.”
“I write poems.” An older girl with exquisitely chiseled features and piercing eyes was looking at me intently from behind a huge cauldron of steaming cabbage. She was dressed with more sophistication that the others, wearing a tight sleeveless shirt and matching short skirt that made her look more woman than girl. I noticed her gold necklace and earrings as they glinted in the light of the cooking fire.

“Do you know any of them by heart? Can you recite any of them here?” I asked.

“I am too shy to do that.” Her beautiful accent made even this simple statement sound like poetry. “I cannot.”

“May I recite a poem to you?” I asked her. “Then maybe after you will want to recite yours to me.”

She nodded. Suddenly I panicked. What poem might these girls relate to? I pored through the archive in my mind. Not one seemed remotely appropriate. Their life experience was so different from mine.

The kitchen became strangely silent. The clatter of washing and cooking had ceased. The whispering and giggling that had been a constant soundtrack in the background was quiet. All the girls stopped their work and were waiting for my poem.
Out of nowhere “The Journey” by Mary Oliver, a poem I hadn’t thought of in months, burst to mind. Without even taking the time to run through it silently to see if it was appropriate, I began speaking: “One day you finally knew / what you had to do.”

The poem is about leaving home, turning away from the many voices that demand that you stay, risking the anguish of those who need and love you, and walking alone into a wild night in order to save “the only life you can save.” The girls listened, transfixed. Each of them had lived through such a turning point. Each of them, at a very young age, had defied tribal tradition and left her parents, friends, and community to save her own life. Who could understand these lines better than they?

It is difficult to describe what happened in that crowded smoky kitchen as I delivered the poem. There I was, a white, middle-class American woman, speaking words written by another white, middle-class American woman, surrounded by Maasai girls who had grown up in tribal villages in the Rift Valley, in families so poor that two cows their parents would get when they gave their daughter to an old man in marriage were their only hope of a better life.

But as “The Journey” filled the kitchen, there was no separation between us. We were transported into a timeless, placeless, languageless realm where we were the same. By the end of poem, tears were running down my face and several of the girls were crying as well. Several of them dove toward me, wrapping their arms around my waist. There was a long silence. The Jecinta asked, “Who is this woman, Mary Oliver? Is she Maasai?”

I shook my head, barely able to speak. “American,” I whispered. “Mzungu. Like Me.”

“How did she know?”

In the silence that answered her question, the girl with the gold necklace and piercing eyes came from behind the cauldron of cabbage into the center of the dirt floor.

“I am ready to say my poem,” she announced.

In a single wave, the other girls and I moved to one side of the kitchen, spontaneously creating a stage among boiling pots of food.

“I am just a girl child.” Her voice was surprisingly strong, pulsing with a natural rhythm as contagious as any slam poet’s vibe. “It sounds good but oh no-/ To my father I’m just a source of income.” She continued through the list: her mother who sees her only as a “beast of burden,” the boys at school who objectify her beauty, and “the sugar daddy,” for whom she was just “a juicy fruit to be eaten raw.” The poem ends with the wise and heartbreaking question, “Who cares for me?”

By now there were about two dozen girls packed into the smoky kitchen or leaning in the windows. As the poet spoke her final question, we all cheered and burst into applause. I looked around the crowd that had gathered. Most girls were melted into each other, their arms draped around their friends. Two girls had maneuvered me into the space between them; one rested her head on my shoulder. For a long moment of silence gazed at each other through the smoke, our eyes full of light.

In these moments of poetic communion when life comes into a harmony, miracles happen organically: the stroke victim’s brain starts making new synaptic connections; a sense of uncanny peace and joy pervades the Freedom Space as bombs explode in the surrounding streets; the armed Sunni soldier embraces the Shiite poet in tears of joy to discover they feel the same grief and longing; a runaway Maasai girl hears her own story told by a white
American writer, and she is empowered to find her own voice. When you speak a poem that is written in the language of your soul, you become a voice for the heart in the world, and everyone around you is blessed by a sudden grace.
Kim Rosen

The Journey

One day you finally knew
what you had to do, and began,
though the voices around you
kept shouting
their bad advice --
though the whole house
began to tremble
and you felt the old tug
at your ankles.
"Mend my life!"
each voice cried.
But you didn't stop.
You knew what you had to do,
though the wind pried
with its stiff fingers
at the very foundations,
though their melancholy
was terrible.
It was already late
enough, and a wild night,
and the road full of fallen
branches and stones.
But little by little,
as you left their voices behind,
the stars began to burn
through the sheets of clouds,
and there was a new voice
which you slowly
recognized as your own,
that kept you company
as you strode deeper and deeper
into the world,
determined to do
the only thing you could do --
determined to save
the only life you could save.

~ Mary Oliver ~

My Soul Cheers

Shutting the valves or entry points where I have allowed toxic behavior and or negative energy to seep in, feels soooo liberating, so empowering, so self loving, I feel so lightened by this, if only I knew that I wouldn’t feel alone, but empowered, I wouldn’t have waited so long.

The first time I left my family, I did so in fear, anger and anxiety, in moments of pure panic due to the way they were all acting, I segregated myself in solitary confinement in fear. Fear of who they were and how weak I literally was, I scurried to be far far away from them.

I was out of control in a lonely spot with raging fear, alone and empty inside, twisted up with confused and conflicting images, tangling love and fear, I had to run to survive, not knowing that I would survive…I left.

It wasn’t an act of courage or empowerment but an act of sheer terror.

The difference between fleeing in terror or fleeing with knowingly and great awareness are oceans apart.

One leaves you vulnerable and alone.
The other empowered and alive with great gusts of newfound peace, like breathing or not breathing.

Breathing with the right to orchestrate your world, using your free will to close the source of pain that flows into your world.

What a great thing to know, how empowerment is grown, it is birthed by making a choice, using your awareness and seeing the cause, doing what you can to eliminate it in your world.

This isn’t at all about them, but about you.

You have the right to open and close relationships.

I love that I found the energy to use the switch, to flip the button to off.

It doesn’t change who they are, but it greatly changes their impact in my world. Little did I know, even though I left the window open, that I was the one I was waiting for…

Inside, as my tank overflows with empowerment, my soul cheers!

(I think I scored one for me!)

Window in Self Love

Sitting here this morning with a visual of a scorecard and its shocking totals are prompting me to shut a door, close a window, and separate myself from those racking up the score.

It wouldn’t be so bad if the game was close to a tie but the numbers in the Perpetrator column are 100 and the Little Girls Zero.

This game started with my parents and continues on to the second generation, they have taken over the scorecard and adding their marks.

Each of us carries our own scorecard and then a collective one for those we travel with, and we write upon who we are by where our hash marks go.

Our actions are our hash marks, no words are needed, its an actions only game of life.

I had 40 years of filling the column up with support for the Perp and his wife, I worked, lifted, carried, toiled, struggled, adding to their columns.

They had my full undying support, my confidence, my faith, and what I called love back then…they had all of me, and I had zero.

Zero was all I felt and all I was worth.

My only worth came from filling up another’s column.

It was up to me to build them up, cheer them up, help them up, make them up, hold them up, Anything to keep them from falling down.

I was worth something If I could keep them from falling down. Like a juggler of bad behaviors, I kept trying harder the more they fell down.

Sadly all the beefing up of their columns couldn’t make them into what I needed them to be, and in the end they fell exactly as they were, nothing changed.

We just can’t know that we are not our brother’s keeper, we can’t make or break their lives by our actions, our actions and our scorecard is our life.

Each of us accumulates scores by what we do.

My actions have drastically changed, I no longer lift a finger to add anything or take away anything from another’s scorecard, I only make marks on my own.

Don’t worry folks, I know what you feel about me, I know the sharp edges of self righteous labels you are sticking on me, the tags of uncaring, cold, heartless, mental, unstable, distant, sickening, all the names float towards me when we communicate, I get it, I receive fully your intentions and your feelings, and this is why I am shutting the window, closing the door, for I am not willing to take it anymore.

You won, the game is over.
I quit.

You can’t keep racking up the scores against me If I am no longer in the game…

My wellness, healing, happiness, peace, love and joy falter as each time I feel these energies coming towards me, it is self-abuse to keep the window open.

I shut the window in self love.

Thanks for Nothing.

Not looking to invite more harsh words, but there is something that occurred to me today, they did not do nothing, they did something, but the reason I can’t tell you about it, is that they did something for my ‘dad’.

What they did wasn’t nothing, it was something, yet it was nothing for me.

So, I am wrong, they do know and they did do lots, it just was for the father.

They have cared for him, housed him, fed him and talked to him, taken him to counsel, so I am way way wrong on this, they have done lots.

They have paid the Defense fees, brought cognac, gave him a get out of jail free card, drove his truck to Texas, packed his stuff, paid his bail, bought his tobacco, visited him in jail, cried when he was arrested, hollered when I wrote my letter to the detective, oh yeah, that’s right, you did lots.

I was wrong; the nothing I felt was that nothing was done for me.

Not for me myself, but for all the girls that man touched and hurt, for all the girls who can’t speak up, I will say it for them, ‘thanks for nothing’.

Peace Inside.

It occurred to me yesterday, that I was like a ghost who refused to leave the scene of a tragedy, a tragedy that I died in, that I was not aware yet that I was dead, that I was lingering around waiting, not willing face it was over.

Facebook allows me to have a portal into lives I am not a part of, and they in mine, without fully connecting in a real one on one, face to face, heart to heart, truth to truth, feelings to feelings, actions to actions, a real life body & soul connection.

We are ghosts in each other’s lives.

I am sure we can be haunted by these exchanges or we can be inspired.

It occurred to me, what would happen if I did not have these portals what would I really know about my family, for in reality I don’t have body-to-body interactions?

It is both a blessing and a curse to have this window into their worlds, I had thought that I was better off than Edna and Thelma, that I had this thread into their worlds, and now I am re-thinking that.

What is it keeping alive?
A relationship or the evidence that there isn’t one there?

I am sure it is as hurtful to them as it is to me, the misunderstanding that cuts deeply each time we see their written words.

Words online, the ghost connection, with great amounts of energy connected.

It’s the energy I feel more than the words.

The energy is alive and electric, cutting and decisive, very much a one-way street, no U-Turns here it screams.

No one is willing to turn around and make a new choice, not me and not them.

Our streets are running parallel but disconnected.

A cement wall running between us broken now and again with facebook, a portal opens and we can see what the other is doing.

Two roads.

One road traveled by many, one road traveled by few.

How can I know what it feels like to travel their road, I can’t. I can only write about mine.

My road is leaving a family of dysfunction.
Their road is traveling with family.

Each of us took the road our hearts and souls directed.

They say I chose this road, but the road chose me.

A road that began as a very little girl…

This road I am on was not an option then, but it was offered to me on December 4th.

Something within me came alive, aware and alert; a voice of truth woke up.

It spoke and I followed.

The Universe and I walk this road, the road back to my true self.

I am sorry we can’t agree, but it can’t be so, you can’t win the world and gain a soul.

I know to the depth of my being you all can’t see and understand my walking, that what I say is hurtful and it is not intended to be, that my blog say things that don’t feel good, but guess what, the truth first hurt me.

It hurt me to know what I had to know, to see what I had to see, to feel what I had to feel, yet in doing so it put me on the road to my soul.

The soul of me, the spirit of my little girl is alive and well within me…even though this road is hard and misunderstood, it is the only road for me.

I hope your road fills your soul, makes you dance and shine, gives you life and feeds your passion, that you are walking hand and hand with your truth. There is nothing more I can want for you is for you to be at Peace inside.

In Me

“Once you know, you can’t not know”, is a quote I read, it’s the knowing that changes you forever.

Knowing is different from hoping, wishing, dreaming or wondering, knowing trumps it all.

I know what they wanted the most is for their lives to remain unaffected, to not let one shadow to cloud their whole lives, to be so strong as to not let it change who they are, and it didn’t.

I have seen the evidence, but refused to see it, I have heard the silence and refused to hear it. I have felt the absence and wouldn’t feel it.

Blindly not accepting what is.

What I wanted the most was for the family to implode, for it to feel what I felt, the loss.

Loss of love.

Loss of trust.

Loss of faith.

The betrayal within the family.

None of that happened, a bomb went off without flicking a hair or altering a stance, it was dealt with like a bad review, ignored.

One bad review will not stop the many who are cheering and clapping as life goes on.

It does play with the mind to see pictures of normal, am I nuts? Did I make this whole thing Up?

What I see displayed around me today, all the unchanges, it has to be the same reaction repeating itself again.

I can just see the tiny girl, speaking the unspeakable and nothing happens. Nothing. Life goes on without a hitch.

You are left to deal and heal alone, unsupported.

Unsupported you drop, you fall, you lose your way, your mind, your knowing, your trust and your faith, stripped naked of all you counted on…you begin again alone.

‘What doesn’t kill you makes you stronger’…oh I am strong.

Also something that has been broken and glued back is stronger in its broken spots.

My heart is stronger.
My faith is stronger.
My trust is stronger.

In me.

Pick Up the Broken Piece.

What a slow learner I am, how incredibly naïve and blindly stupid…I am surprised that I am just now catching on. How has it taken me this long, almost six years to figure this out?

The pain I have gone through, the mental anguish and all the soul searching, and still I didn’t know.

My family didn’t break apart, wasn’t destroyed and didn’t crumble under the weight of abuse, it wasn’t shattered, or flung upside right or mentally broken, only I was.

I broke.

In my head I had them all broken up like me, but they remain intact, a full family, minus a few.

No worse for the wear, unscathed and unbroken, they are holding up strong as the same family unit, while I am broken.

My brokenness is sharp, loud, and unwanted, a jagged point that doesn’t fit into the familiar routine.

A routine I can’t remember, forgetting the lines and missing the steps, characters changing before my eyes, my script no longer matches theirs.

When they laugh I cry, what they love I fear, when they gather I flee…I shout at their silences, say wrong words that jumble up the play.

I am the heckler or a bad actor playing on the wrong set and ruining the show.

When I am gone and silent the show returns to its familiar dialogue.

I see the picture clearer now…I see me trying to direct a play in progress, wanting to hand out new scripts, change characters and lines, make it a horror movie instead of a comedy…

What I have been trying so hard to do is change a play in progress.

I have been wanting them to change so the broken me fits in…while they want me to return to the stage unbroken, healed, once again the old me.

The spot is open, the stage is there unchanged all I have to do is not be broken and rejoin the chorus line.

What I know to be true of all people who are abused within the family, it is not so much the first betrayal, but the second one.
The second betrayal is that once you expose yourself and speak your words is that nothing changes, except that you are now alone and exposed.

Kicked off the stage of your childhood home.

I sit here dumbfounded at my naiveté how I foolishly believed that a child, even an adult child that was broke, would break the whole family, but my family marched on, again.

No one stopped to pick up the broken piece.

Tree In Tree

By Deena Metzger

"I am no longer afraid of mirrors where I see the sign of the amazon, the one who shoots arrows.
There was a fine red line across my chest where a knife entered,
but now a branch winds about the scar and travels from arm to heart.
Green leaves cover the branch, grapes hang there and a bird appears.
What grows in me now is vital and does not cause me harm. I think the bird is singing.
I have relinquished some of the scars.
I have designed my chest with the care given to an illuminated manuscript.
I am no longer ashamed to make love. Love is a battle I can win.
I have the body of a warrior who does not kill or wound.
On the book of my body, I have permanently inscribed a tree."
Deena

Today while delivering mail, I listened to the CD that accompanies the book, “Saved by a Poem” by Kim Rosen.

There were many poems, or lines in the poems that spoke to me, but the image of this one stuck with me.

If you go to her website, www.deenametzger.com you will see a fabulous woman who is fully embracing I M Perfect.

She had a mastectomy and placed a tattoo upon the scar…