IMPERFECT Lady

Fully Engrossed in Her Life.

“There are three kinds of business in this world, Yours, Mine and God’s. If I am in your business, it leaves no one is in mine…” Byron Kate.

When you have children it seems that our business is their business at least until they are capable of doing it for themselves and actually that is the greatest sense of freedom we will get when we can see our children flying well in their own business; their lives.

When they fly way off course it seems that we do have to leave our lives to help them navigate back and at the same time be present in our lives.

My fear and challenge is to return to my life and allow them to make corrections needed to get theirs back on track.

And the most important thing to learn is not what knocked you off course, but also how to get your wheels spinning in the right direction again, and the only way to do this is to do this.

To do the walking, to make the changes, to gather your life back.

I just didn’t think that we both had to do our parts and return to our separated worlds, somehow I got stuck in my child’s life and my meddling there was actually slowing down the progress of healing.

I am grateful that she told me what it felt like to have me crowding her world.

I am also grateful I could hear that and can rejoin my life that has been somewhat neglected. Okay pretty neglected.

What a gift to return to my business, to relax and give her back business.

There is finesse to this mothering thing, to help but not takeover, like a hostile takeover I bet it feels similar to.

Where at a weakened point another entity comes in takes over.

I don’t want to be a corporate raider, but a loving mom and when I overstay or overstep my bounds, it is like taking over a company, or my daughter’s world. I have the image now, and I can see that I was lurking on the sidelines waiting to snap it up, instead of giving her space to shore up the weak spots.

I love that I know this now.

I love that I am not in the business of taking over other people’s business, I love that I can be very content with one business, mine.

I guess the best mother is there for consulting services and will be asked when needed…until then, she carries on in her world, doing what she loves to do, growing where she needs to grow, learning how to navigate into being a mom in the ever changing landscape of our children’s lives.

We must remember to keep the woman in the mother healthy, happy and fully engrossed in her life.

You can feel its worth.

While tossing around in my head conversations about the differences between going into the Light and heading into the Darkness boggle my mind.

How it is that a person loses direction, how do their maps get turned upside down, how instead of growing brighter they can actually become very dark and NOT even know it or maybe more true, is not know how to stop it.

That their life blood is drained and they are actively involved in the letting go and letting it drip out, drip by drip, bit by bit.

Their vital life energy leaves and they don’t even know it.

The passions die, the love changes, inside of them has been an energy transplant and they are totally unaware.

This is very scary to me and yet very much understandable.

For if a perpetrator or abuser does his job well, you will not even feel your self leave, his sweet words and wonderful attention dances before your eyes, and like a magician, he switches your energy to his.

Once the switch has been made, you have to work like Hell to bring back your bright energy, your innocence, your passions, good energy, self worth, self esteem, love.

I see my daughter now as one who is lost in the sea of darkness inside of her, and she doesn’t even know who is the bad man who stole this, who came in and courted her while draining all that was good from her.

If after the first time you do not tell, you believe you are now his equal, and his lure and charm hard to resist, his needing you a drug that keeps you dumping more and more good into.

I am not certain, but feel that only abuse does this.

That you come in as Light and can have it stolen away…

The little boy with Oprah who was overly sensitive to the darkness, knew that Darkness FEEDS off of the Light.

This sounded weird to me, but it literally swallows whole, kindness, love, compassion, caring, it has a voracious appetite.

Darkness doesn’t see who you are, just your good energy that it needs to survive.

I had to stop feeding the monster, to stop giving up my life for its happiness, its peace and its joy.

The Light energies try feeding the monster to make it brighter, to make it happier; to make it more loving, and all it does is suck you dry.

That little boy also said that the dark energies can come to you as Father, brother, sister, friend, that it isn’t some monster.

Dr. Jill Bolte-Taylor also suggests that we are responsible for the energies we bring into a room.

I believe that abused people abuse people, that hurt people hurt people.

What seems we need is to heal our own pain, to be the one, to be the caretaker of our own energies, to stop blaming others for how we feel, and to harness our own Light.

As well as being responsible for another’s happiness, peace, love or joy.

If we can separate ourselves and not be sucking the life blood from each other, and instead be Light keepers within ourselves, the world would be a much brighter place.

My daughter seems to have allowed another to extinguish her Light and what I want most is for her to be her own Light keeper.

To hold it dear.

Yet, maybe you have to lose something before you can feel its worth.

A Liar too.

There seems to come a time in each relationship where the titles and names do not matter, where instead lies the meat of the relationship, the giving and the taking, the feelings we feel in the wake of their actions, the way we are treated or the lack thereof, it is like we can finally see what it is we are tasting.

I asked myself if lies was an ingredient in love and could not find one recipe of Love that included lies.

Not the love of parents, friends, lovers or self. Lies and Love don’t match.

I also know that all relationships no matter what kind are subject to renegotiations if and when the ingredients change of one party.

There isn’t a relationship out there, as far as I can see, that holds this sacred space of no negotiation.

To me, all relationships are fluid and are living breathing exchanges between two people, that will change as the individuals in them change, and in fact the relationship is only as good as the weakest one.

The weaker one is the sum total of the relationship, for if the stronger one settles, so goes the relationship down to the lowest denominator.

My experiences with dysfunction is the strong lower themselves to be okay with dropping down to the low level, it is seen as kind and loving and accepting, and to forgive all actions, and call it unconditional love.

Unconditional love to some is allowing all types of negative behaviors to messy up a relationship and you are to love no matter what.

The ingredients of dysfunctional love is that anything goes and all must be forgiven, and relationships are made of steel there is no renegotiation, and you and I are locked behind the wall of our relationship.

The relationship between sister and sister in some is non negotiable.

Between parent and child…

That what started out has to remain, we are locked in forever, like a steel cage within there is no way out, we must forever and a day be held together, withstanding bad behavior for the cause of Relationship.

Two victims behind the relationship cage.

I say, that if one in the cage changes, the other gets to leave if the changes can’t be reversed.

When one changes, the whole relationship changes. It isn’t a cage, but rather the dance within the cage.

Some put high regard on the titles, Mom, sister, daughter, father, and I see the individual behind the title, and I believe that the sister is only as good as her actions in the cage.

Lies are lies no matter whose mouth utters them.
Abuse is abuse no matter whose bodies are delivering it. It is convenient only for the one who is doing the bad behavior to use the trump card sister, to put that out in front of the poor behavior.

Well, in my world I have taken down the cages that held me in and I am free.

I no longer will be victimized or blinded by a title.

Actions are actions, lies are lies, and deceit is deceit.

Setting aside the relationship and seeing you as you, lies are not becoming.

No good can be grown from a lie.
No self worth can be gained from a lie.
No love can be sown from a lie.

In my childhood family they live among the lies and are not even aware that who they are playing with isn’t so, raised in the darkness full of lies, it is their normal. They don’t even know they live a lie for they never lived outside of it. Lies is all they ever knew. They have said and do say, that my parents did the best they could, and they did. But their best is to present one thing to the front while doing something else behind the scenes.

A lie I call it.

Most will not deal with the ‘thing’ behind the scenes; they would rather just play with what is in front, the pretend relationship label. Father, Mother instead of really looking at the actions within the cage.

What happens in the cage is what you have a relationship with.

Action to action is how we dance and relate to each other.
If one says a lie and the other does not see it, the lie still happens, one is just denying it.

It changes the dance from love to love and trust to trust… to lie to love and what they want is for us to continue to trust them while they lie.

How?

What is the point?

Who trusts someone who lies?

I can trust that I will not trust you when you lie.

I trust that I will tell you I don’t believe you.

I will say love doesn’t lie.

I wonder why you lie?

I wonder if you know that our relationship can’t hold what you do?

It almost seems that if you have to lie, you know that if you spoke the truth, that it would change what we have.

Yet sadly the lie does the same thing.

Whether you do something that would jeopardize our relationship or you lie about doing it, it matters not.

You have breeched its integrity, you have changed its value.

As a child, my relationship with both my parents changed at a very young age, the seed of mistrust, conditional love was planted. In order to remain in the relationship, I had to keep their lies.

Keeping lies changes who you are.
Keeping lies of another doesn’t make them better, brighter, loving, happy, kind and compassionate.

Holding a bag full of lies makes you a liar too.

Until she can find her own.

The hardest part of being a mom is when your child takes an exit that you didn’t see coming and they seem to disappear from the usual landscape and it leaves you separated.

And I am not even sure what exit she took, where she is or what her intentions are, just that she has left the lane of what was and is now heading down a road that neither of us are familiar with.

As I continue to travel down my regular road, off to the side is this other lane of unfamiliar nagging at me, this road from my view is full of potholes and hairpin curves with disappearing drop-offs and my daughter seems blind to all its hazards.

I am not certain if she is at a wayside unsure or if she is going forward with a full head of steam.

I am not even sure what is making me uneasier, her being on that road or not knowing if she is sitting down in wonder or going further into its complicated bends.

Our voices have been silenced. But all that seems to be happening now is a silent movie, where the drama continues, but I can’t hear the words.

The not knowing is far worse, I believe than knowing.

In the knowing, I know and can deal.

It is like her life has slipped from my view.

This almost seems like the far end of a spectrum, one being you are doing too much in a child’s life, overtaking it and this is the complete opposite, where you are completely taken out.

In the middle of the spectrum are two people who allow the other their lives, we share and explore and understand their individual journeys.

I am wondering how to hook our roads back up, how to join them together in a way that honors and gives space, in a way that respects our differences, but allows us to trust each other.

Is there a way two people can be together on two different roads?

As women we have lots in common and I am sure it is harder when I have more experience and I have been her superior as her mother for all these years, but is there a bridge that we can stand upon and share our views?

I will have to let go of my fears and my ‘know it all’ attitude and let her show me the landscape of her new world, I will have to be a visitor to a foreign land.

It truly feels like two distinct worlds.

Yet I believe and feel that I have traveled the world she is going into, so it isn’t that foreign to me, perhaps it is only new and exciting to her, she is the foreigner not I.

What is so perplexing is that you never leave reality, this is an inward journey, you are traveling away from your essential self.

Away from your morals, your values, your worth, your self esteem, your dreams, your passions, your soul. Into a world of secrets, lies and deceit…heading towards a self that is unfamiliar, foreign.

It is the road to no you.

You are being lured down this road by a friendly face that is the façade of negative energies, manipulating you with false promises and pretty lies.

If she were to travel this road alone, He would be her only guide.

What I want is to walk with the two of them and give the real story, like Paul Harvey’s ‘the rest of the story’.

Yet he knows and perhaps she knows too, that I will be the story wrecker, I will unveil the pretty lies and unravel the promises and make them as they are empty.

So what scares me the most is that my familiar voice will be drowned out by his, that she will tune me out and turn a deaf ear to my words and cling to his.

Her life in its innocence doesn’t have a voice of her own.

I am sure she feels the pull between him and I, both of us wanting her. And what I want the most is for her to have a separate voice from both of us, but I don’t feel she has one for her self as yet. I see her as a girl who confused and twisted and wants to have love and attention but it comes with such a price tag, her self worth.

I can almost understand the twist between what he says and how she feels.

His promise land is a secret place and it can’t reach the light of day.

In order for her to travel down his road, she lies to me.

What I want most is for the lies to stop.

Lies to herself and lies to me, both are taking a toll on her.

It is so telling to see what lies can do to your spirit, you can literally see her growing darker.

The truth will set your Spirit free!

The two roads I see in my minds eye is the road of lies and the road of truth. One road darkens and leads you away from self and the other will support and Lighten who you are.

You wonder what makes some travel into the darkness and what makes others travel towards the Light. What decides this and can they make a U-Turn?

I will do as any good mother or women who see another descending into the darkness will do. I will give her my voice until she can find her own.

It Is what It is.

When they say, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” I also feel that truth can be viewed the same way. We only see what we want to see and disregard the rest.

I also believe we can only see the truth as deep as we have explored our own truths, we simply can’t go where we haven’t been.

As I lived on the surface of my life for 46 years, I also was satisfied with being on th surface in others lives, I didn’t want to go deeper or explore the depths of relationships, I nervously just skated along on the top.

Assuming lots and giving yards and reams of allowances, knowing I guess that if I pushed the matter, they would fall short of what my impressions held and then I would be faced with something I was unwilling to do anything about.

Or intuitively I knew or feared that there was something to fear deeper in me, and there was.

The truth we see is only as deep as our own truths go, and we give leeway to others so not as to upset our own applecarts.

Reality’s truths are always right in the open, but we can see only the tip of the iceberg until we have dived deeply into our own journey and have explored all the crevices and valleys of pain and suffering, of what made us to be who we are today.

While most feel that we can just take a quick look and move one, what they are too afraid of knowing is that all they have built their lives upon isn’t what they thought it to be.

If you are a fearless truth seeker of yourself, you can then witness the truth as it appears in others, and not put a cloak or veil upon what lies behind their words and deeds, you can see clearly what it is they so desperately don’t want you to see.

Like having truth vision. I am still duped when I want someone to be something that it is impossible for them to be, when my dreams override their truths.

But in the end truth wins, not yours or mine, but reality's truth. It simply is what it is!

Selfishly I Respectfully Do Not Care!

“I respectfully do not care!” is a new quote I heard from Martha Beck as she spoke today on the Lisa Oz radio show.

People have told her (Martha) that in order to promote and sell books and to keep her selling herself she needs to be on facebook, twitter and the like, but doing so has made her sick, physically sick with shingles.

She found that she can talk with her daughter, and if her daughter feels her mom says something profound, her daughter will post it online.

Martha has total trust in her body and she was getting physically sick doing what others wanted her to do, but what wasn’t natural or feeling right for her.

When she says, “I respectfully do not care,” it means I respect what you are saying, it’s not for me.

I love that.

She is following and listening to her body.

This may be my second favorite quote from her and it validates that you heard the request, but don’t care.

Don’t care if all are doing this, me and my body are not okay with it,

“I respectfully do not care” almost sounds like what I tell my children. I respectfully do not care if all the kids are doing it you are not. (when the other kids parents didn’t care and we had different rules.)

This phrase actually gives you the freedom to be an individual, to follow the signals of your body, to listen to the inner knowing, to care more about yourself than others.

Selfishly I respectfully do not care!

Blanket of White Light

I just awoke from a dream in which I was conversing with my mother, part of the dream she was there, the other she was on the phone, it vacillated back and forth.

There was a lot of over talking where our loud voices drowned out the other; it portrayed pretty accurately how my feelings would react to her words and sentiments.

What I feel the most is being washed over by her needs, like a heavy pull into her very twisted life, or being sucked into a vortex, while what I need the most was the serene peace away from her.

Yesterday I heard about twenty minutes of an interview that Oprah had with a child suffering from being too sensitive to negative energies, and how he stated that he has to steer clear of negative people or their energies will invade his life and overtake his calm peace.

He profoundly spoke of using White Light to surround himself and how this keeps the negative energies away.

(I just went to www.oprah.com and watched him talking to Oprah about negative energies and White Light…it is at towards the ending of the write up and you can actually watch him.)

His simple description of wrapping himself in White Light prevents him from being spun out of control by negative people and things, equals my backing up from many in my family. Once you know where the drains are we need to steer clear.

What he also stated is that negative energies feed off of the calm energies…. When you put this into practical practice, you can see how pedophiles feed off little girls, and it changes them once the negative energies are allowed in, it alters their balance inside.

It is clear to me the visual of dark energies and how if you are not aware, will be sucked into them and their world, how you will serve them and leave your calm peaceful self behind. As a child you are unaware of what even happened, and sadly in the case of the monster in the home, you can’t escape the negativity, you are saturated in it.

This also seems to explain even my daughter, how her good energy was slurped up by his negative life situation eventually darkening her, changing her brightness, and dimming her.

The little boy speaks of doing the White Light by saying and knowing he is calm, love, awesome, cool, wise etc.

This is how we overpower the negative, by knowing who we are.

In his case he is overly sensitive to anyone who is carrying negative energies, and that even in his home, his parents have to try and be peace, love and joy, for if they are worry, fretting and anxious, he feels that and responds.

This brilliant example shows how our energies affect others.

How I had to back up from my original family to maintain my inner peace, love and joy.

And oddly enough it also shows me that my husband is right on track, when he said that our home had to be the safe haven for my daughter.

My greatest feat in all of this, was to continually push away the thoughts and fears, and settle instead of keeping it a normal peaceful place to be and for me to match that peace as well.

Our home had to be a White Light zone.

My dream of the vortex of negative energy and how it wants to dance with my peace by washing over me and leaving nothing but a shell remaining.

Unless I speak up, saying loudly and clearly, I know who you are what you want and I refuse you entrance in my world.

My intent 6 long years ago was to go forth with Love, Peace and Joy, what I didn’t know then was that I was hooking my wagon to White Light.

All my choices from that day forward had to match peace, love and joy inside. If I didn’t feel at peace I didn’t make that choice, be it mother, father, sister or brother, I let them all go for my peace.

Now I know I was choosing to wrap myself in a blanket of White Light.

Let me be Free!

While many may not feel or experiences brushes from souls passed, I feel the presence of my father’s sister, the one who taught me how to quilt, who set me on a path of playing with fabric that suited my nature.

She didn’t bend me to do what she felt, but listened and offered to me a pattern that fit my free spirit, one that gave me my first drink of what it feels like to be the architect, the designer and the builder, she opened the door for me to play.

She herself would do intricate, tiny little pieces that had to match perfectly, her work was detailed and painstakingly put together, I was her complete opposite, yet we matched in doing what we loved to do.

Her past relationships with men were ones that left her hurting and it seemed she found solace in Art.

My youngest daughter, out of the blue, says she wants to do a quilt, and it is the same quilt my Aunt had offered to me as a good first quilt.

Unbeknownst to my daughter, I feel she is being spoken to by her great aunt, for she knows the feelings my daughter is going through and is heading her in a direction where she can find herself, Art.

During my darkest spots on my journey, I clung to the moments when I had the energy to be lost in fabric, design and colors, and in those moments, I could feel my Aunt speak to me, telling me words of wisdom, that applied to working on a new technique in quilting or walking a new walk in life.

I was given my Aunt’s sewing machine after she died, and I believe her spirit lingers nearby and encourages me to stretch and reach and be beyond where she was able to be.

Her influence in my quilting, especially when I had just begun was key to me continuing forward, her undying faith that I could do anything is with me still.

I felt that I wasn’t alone anymore in teaching my daughter, that I would have leagues of woman who have gone before lending their wisdom and voices with mine.

My aunt loved my daughter, her spirit, her disposition, her spunk, her flair for being herself, and I know that if it is possible to help her now, she will.

Today is a full circle moment, where I can be the teacher as I take my daughter to choose the fabric of her first quilt, it is my greatest hope that I can instill in her the love of quilting that my Aunt gave to me, or the art of creating.

And all she did was open the door and let me be free!

Bathed in the Light.

“A chick pecks its way out of its eggshell and is born into the world when a toxic gas fills up the interior of the egg. At that point, it is literally dying to be born.
Is there a toxic situation in your life that it's time to break free of in order to born to the next level of your existence? Is there a symbolic eggshell surrounding you that is time to peck away at, freeing yourself to live more fully?”
Marianne Williamson

I love this question and I love the visual it portrays, how we can literally feel like we are suffocating in life and need to start pecking holes in what we are doing.

And I love “dying to be born”.

Most changes, at least life altering changes, require a dying in order for there to be a birth, a letting go in order to grab on to something new, a giving up one way before gaining something new.

Change is a one two step.

“You have to be willing to let go of who you are, to become who you want to be.” I can’t remember the author of that quote, but Wayne Dyer uses this often.

The little chick can’t stay in the egg and be born, she has to be willing to get out of her toxic life in order to thrive.

And the greatest news is that we will know intuitively when the time has come, when we can no longer remain in a relationship, when its toxic energies simply overwhelm and threaten to kill the essence of who we are IF we are to remain inside the shell of that old relationship.

Like a very brave little chick, we have to go out into a very big and strange land…leaving behind a relationship we have outgrown.

As the little chick, once we peck our way free of this toxicity, we are free to live a life we can’t even imagine it can be.

From a small confined limiting space to the wide-open field of pure potential that Rumi speaks about.

The visual is striking, a dark small space of an eggshell or the expanse that surrounds it.

Held in the darkness or bathed in the Light.

Spoiled Brat?

Sarah Ban Breathnach writes in her book, “Moving On,” let’s take a fresh look at the word that saps our strength often:

Scared.

“What difference do it make if the thing you scared of is real or not?” wonders Toni Morrison. Fair enough question. Woman have always know how to comfort the fears of others; we just don’t remember to use the same tender, loving, tactics on ourselves. So the next time you feel a random panic attack starting, take a deep breath, and transpose the “a” and the “c” in “scared” and you’ll find not only another word but a world of difference. You’ll uncover the

Sacred

Doesn’t that make you feel better already? It works for me, every time. I’d be willing to bet the house that your sacred, like mine, is very close – the walls surrounding you or the floorboards supporting you, even if they need a good scrub. The best definition I ever heard of fear is “False Events Appearing Real.” When I am anxious I notice that my fears seem to be speculative future-tense marauders. Will there be enough? What will I do? How will I cope? The best way I know how to disarm such fear is by keeping a Gratitude Journal. A Gratitude Journal is a polite, daily thank-you note to the Universe- and a reminder to yourself of the very real blessings you have now. In this moment. You know how insulted you are after you’ve knocked yourself out for your kids and all you get in return is surly silence. What am I raising you probably wonder, a bunch of brats? Well, an ancient spiritual axiom teaches us, “As below, so above.”

Because you’re not spoiled rotten, at the end of every day write down five things or moments you experienced for which to be thankful. Small pauses that brought a smile or a sense of relief during the day. The kindness of somebody holding your place in the post office line when you have a lot of packages to get from the car. The plumber showing up on time. Fitting in to last summer’s shorts. A hug from a friend. A fortune cookie with just the right message. Saying no to a bake sale without guilt. Easily switching carpooling days. Getting an extension on the deadline. Better yet, meeting the deadline, Phew!

We think it’s the big moments that define our lives – the promotion, the new baby, the renovated kitchen, the wedding. But the narrative of our lives is written in the small, the simple and the common. The overlooked. The discarded. The reclaimed. Life is not made up of minutes, hours, days, weeks, months, or years, but the moments. You must experience each one before you can appreciate it.

Whether you are chopping carrots, shampooing your hair, writing a memo, making love, talking on the phone, walking the dog, or eating an apple, savor those sensations involved. All of those moments, whether happy, routine, or even painful are Life’s heartbeats.
Sarah

In the past six years I have been made to be much more sensitive to each of life’s heartbeats, to feel that which is in reality now, and even how life seems to be lived on a pinhead of time, how it literally is the heartbeat of life.

This moment, the one we are breathing in is where life happens and to be grateful or even to see all that arrives is overwhelming.

I love how she says we could be like spoiled brats and not even pay attention to all that the Universe gives us each day.

Yesterday while delivering mail in the high winds and whiteout conditions, I focused on the black bare roads at times, and was so grateful to see their blackness in midst of swirling white. “Thank you black roads!”

When you begin to look for things to be grateful for, you will find more and more grateful things.

I will just watch how I go about my days, how I approach or leave little moments in time, and I a grateful child or a spoiled brat?