"If I had experienced different things, I would have different things to say." Mark Nepo
I loved yesterday's reading...I know what he means.
"So often, I have felt troubled and guilty bearing witness to my pain, and yet, not to make things worse. Somehow, in saying just what Mother had done in her cruel need to be the center, or just what Father couldn't do out of his fear of facing my mother; somehow telling the truth as I know it makes me feel like a bad person - as if I'm making my pain up, as if I'm hurting others by saying bad things about them."
"But the unshakable bottom of all this is that I'm not making things up. If I have unkind things to say, it's because I have experienced unkind things. And so, my only guide in this witnessing is to be accurate and honest. While I am not a victim, I didn't ask for certain shaping experiences to happen to me. I didn't ask to be slapped or ridiculed as a boy or to be mistreated by lifelong friends later in life. In truth, If I had experienced different things, I would have different things to say."
"What is most healing about bearing witness to things exactly as they are, including my own part in my pain, is that when the voice of pain fits the pain, there is no room for distortion or illusion. In this way, truth becomes a clean bandage that heals, keeping the dirt out of the wound."
"To voice things as they are is the nearest medicine." Mark Nepo
I was raised, "If you don't have anything nice to say, say nothing at all." That not nice things were not to be talked about. Which leaves the abuse out of the picture or any negative experience.
Where then is it okay to talk about unkind things?
I had a profound visual with two blogs by one person. How one blog only had the "Nice things to say" while the other seemed to delve into to unkind behaviors of others...like there is a need to keep the two blogs separated.
It brought a clear visual for me to see how my mother kept a clean and kind blog, while behind the scenes unkindness happened, but it never made it to her blog page/life.
That our unkind treatment from our father had no place in my mother's idyllic life. It would mar the otherwise beautiful large family picture she was painting. Where my father was a hardworking provider for his family, who never asked for nothing.
If you are silent about the Unkind things, your blog/life would look picture perfect.
My mother's life had no room for any negative talk about my father. Which left us no place to go. Our wounds did not fit into her picture perfect family. His negative treatment wasn't allowed, let alone hers.
I know that my mother kept separated our sexual abuse, it belonged on another blog, not the every day blog, but a special one that was rarely visited and you didn't want to stay there long and it was 'private', you didn't air this out to everyone. Abuse doesn't go on the every day blog...it is to be hidden off to the side. So hidden that no one talked about it, ever. Until someone broke the rule and spoke up and said, "unkind" things about an unkind experience with my father.
His and her negative blogs then were revealed.
I had lived my whole life working for her daily family blog, not realizing that she had a secret, that I had a secret abuse blog going on as well. And my life actually made sense when you blended the two.
I became totally normal when the two blogs collided.
What is so key, is that the truth lies in both blogs, but the two blogs shall never meet each other. This is a great visual of disassociation or denial...or in my experience the FALC way.
The unkind things go to the blog called, "Forgiveness of Sins"...you speak of it , and then segregate them to another space.
When she forbid us to bring abuse to her daily blog, she left the real me out. I wasn't able to be myself in her world.
What I have been determined to do was to combine both blogs and make them me. That is the true representation of me.
As I look upon this blog, it is mostly about the things my mother kept hidden...I speak of abuse, of unkind experiences, the things that usually are kept off the daily blogs...find their way here.
