IMPERFECT Lady

I no longer have to pretend.

‎"I learned to survive by withholding what feels real. When events happen - when someone says or does something that hurts me - I have learned to absorb the hit and pretend that nothing changed, that everything is the same. But when I do this, my energy is used up in maintaining the pretense that nothing has happened, and I begin to spin coldly in the dark."

"It is so simple and yet so brave to say that we are hurt when we are hurt, that we are sad when we are sad, that we are scared when we are scared. In very direct and daily ways, this energy of realness - this mana- changes situations because the immediate expression of our truth releases light and warmth that influences the life we are a part of. This is the way our spirit shines." Mark Nepo

Learning to absorb the hit and then act as if nothing has changed is the crux of all dysfunction.  It leads you into a false life...an illusion, where your 'kind' parents don't hurt you.  You brought in the hit/abuse and then you proceeded to act like nothing changed.  It did. Your body is carrying the truth, while you are acting as if all is well with thee.

I didn't even know that I lived this way, didn't fully grasp how my un-realness was the key to my pretend life.  In fact, I didn't know that I was allowed to truly act as if something HAD changed.

The forgiveness of sins seems to dovetail with this, for when you utter the words, "your sins are forgiven" you then can revert back to the acting as if nothing happened.  Back to pretending...

Learning to be real was actually shocking to my body at first, I was filled with terror and fear to actually say what I needed to say and even flooded with guilt for doing so. That I had no right to be real.

In believing this way, anyone can do and say anything to you and your job is to absorb the hits.  Take it in and swallow, in silence.

Doesn't that seem like a victim's role?  Like you are not allowed to speak up or get out of the way?  

Imagine life if all were allowed to say and move in response to real life.

I know for me, it has simplified my life.  I feel so much more at peace when I can use the words yes and no, when I can move towards or away from folks, when I am no longer an absorption cushion to all kinds of behavior.

And the best part is, I no longer have to pretend...

 

 

 

They are my heroes

In the paper yesterday two young girls spoke up about their abuse...and their abusers are now in the court system.  While many may focus on what kind of punishment the men will get, I see this from how it affects the young girls.

Their courage to speak of what happened to them is extremely powerful in their lives.  They are no longer victims when they speak out.  No matter how the sentencing goes, these girls will not carry a secret, consciously or unconsciously, about themselves.  They will carry no shame.

Their wounds are being aired out in childhood, being expressed and voiced to adults in their lives...and they are being heard.

It is my belief, that they will heal faster and perhaps not have their abuse linger and bleed into their lives, by treating it today, in their childhood.

They are able to see their abuse as being a crime of the men, not of the child.

They will not carry the burden any longer of their untold story.  It has been told, it has been heard, and the men are labeled for who they are.

As the men are addressed as the perpetrators, the child feels their innocence.  It is this return to innocence, to come out behind the secret that will reset their inner worthiness.

Abuse doesn't have to carry a life sentence when it is categorized in the truthful manner of what it is.  To see, the imbalanced scales of what happened, who was in power and who was powerless.

The most damaging part of child abuse is when it goes untreated, unspoken about, and that the child never gets her innocence back.

I know the courage it takes to stand up, to say out loud what most don't want to hear...and I was an adult.  I am in awe of the girls, these little girls, who have the strength to do this.  I wish the papers would write about this from the girls perspective and not that of the criminal.

What a brilliant story it would be if told in their own words...they are my heroes. 

 

 

If you don't know...

I heard Wayne Dyer speak of what we know, and the comparrison to what we don't know and yet how we live in the small place believing only in what we know.

As I heard him talk about moving out of the small space of knowing into the mystery of unknown and live from there, it is exactly as I did with my daughter yesterday.

Somehow, in my mind, I believed that I had to know what was best...and then give my advice in how to get there.  When in actuality, it is just a mind game, a place of believing you know, while the unknown is really alive and moving.

When I fully embrace that I can't know, I am free.  It is only when I feel I am supposed to know and it is impossible to know, that I feel out of control.

Yet if I fully embrace the out of controllness of unknowing I am free.

Not sure if I can articulate this correctly, but the feelings inside are completely different.

As a mother who FEELS she should know, and it is impossible to know, I feel anxiety and stress.

As a mother who FEELS she can't know and doesn't know, she is totally at one with the mystery of the unknown.  I love that I am not supposed to know.

I was okay not knowing where I was going, but somehow the mother part was still plugged into believing that I know, as far as my kids are concerned.

It seemed like a careless mother to not know.  So much for the phrase, "Mother knows best..."

What advice can you give if you don't know?

 

What Love means to Me.

Mothering adult children has been a perplexing inner dilemma...of what to do and when, and when to hold on and when to let go.

Letting go doesn't mean I don't care. Letting go means I care enough to let them be free.  Free to choose, free to experience, free to learn and to grow, free to make choices that suit their needs.

Letting go means letting them do their lives...

I think, I thought, letting go meant giving up.

I also think, the letting go that I experienced was that I was cast out in the careless sea.  I wasn't let go for my own good, but let go  when I was too small...before I was ready to make it on my own.  

So, to me letting go is scary and fearful.

Letting go in a healthy way, means to allow...to release my grip on their lives.

My middle daughter turned 23 today. She has made wonderful choices in her life...clearly showing me how capable she is in finding her way, in her time, doing what she feels is best for her.  And yet I worry, fret, think, conjure up situations out in the future, that I can't possibly know.  I get lost in the tangle of her life choices...wanting to protect and keep her from 'harm'.

However, if I had my way today, I myself would have caused harm in stepping into her life unasked.  But the Universe protected her from me, in small ways, like the printer not working...etc.  It spared her from my 'knowing' best.

In giving up, and allowing, I can be a woman without control of her world, and just someone cheering her on as she makes the best choices for herself.

I should know by now, that my 'good intentions' are really control issues and my fears.

Letting my children decide isn't caring less, but actually caring more.

Letting them have a voice and a choice based upon their feelings, not mine.

As I let it all go today...I felt free from the responsibility and was once again free in my world and it left her free in hers.  Happy Birthday Honey...I love you. Letting you be you...is what love means to me.

 

 

Someone is your Jailer.

I watched myself in a conversation yesterday, where a person was explaining to me why she was going to fight a choice that another person had chosen. How she didn't want what was...and was seeking to prevent it.

As we exchanged sentences it was clear to me, that she was trying to force things for her benefit...and that she was willing to bend and twist things to make it 'work'.  In a few minutes, she decided she wasn't going to talk any more about it, it was too upsetting.

I then returned to silence.  In that silence, it came to me, you can use force to get your way, but that only one side of the relationship will be 'happy' and the other will feel your force.

I could see how force seemed to be more palatable than acquiescing.  

If the force girl wins and prevents the choice of the other to flow, what is gained?  Is that truly winning and controlling?  

I saw how force can override the truth, but with a great cost.  The cost is peace and freedom.

I could see the toll force was having on her, how she was working feverishly to control the flow of another's choice, and that alone stole her peace.  She used fear as her motivation and tried to convince me, it was for the best.

It wasn't even for her best...controlling another puts you in charge of another's life.

As I continued on in silence and eventually moved out of her space, I saw how important it is to allow others to make their own choices; to not impede the flow of free will.

Is it a gain to acquire someones presence in your world, by forcing them to be there, by manipulating and cajoling to work to block their exit?

To me, both will be lossers in this...the jailer and the jailed.  

Imagine how much more powerful it would be to fully support the other's choice, no matter of the cost to your self, to allow them the luxury of movement and self growth?

If you don't have a choice, someone is your jailer.

 

 

Feelings feel felt.

"The fastest way to freedom is to feel your feelings."  Gita Bellin

"This sounds pretty simple, but though it's easy to know you have feelings, easy to know their weight and agitation and suddenness of mood, it is another, more subtle matter to feel them - that is, to let them penetrate your being in the way wind snaps through a flag."

"This is necessary because if we don't feel our feelings all the way through, they never leave us, and then we do all kinds of unusual things to get out from under them.  This is the cause of many an addiction."

"I've diverted myself many times by becoming involved in what surrounds my pain or sadness, while never feeling the thing itself.  So, when someone asks me how I feel, I wind up retelling the circumstances of the pain, but not feeling it.  Or strategizing what to do next, but  not feeling it. Or anticipating reactions, but not feeling what is mine to feel.  Or swimming in the anger and injustice, but not diving through the wound."

"Though we fear it, feeling our feelings is the only clear and direct way to free our hearts of pain."  Mark Nepo

How appropriate to have this reading this morning.  Feeling our feelings seems like it would be impossible to do, yet I quickly get caught up in the current of anger and injustice, the wide and swirling river of it...unexpressed feelings from long long ago.

It seems that river never runs dry.

What I believe happens is that if you can't feel as a child, then as an adult, you don't just feel this moment of feelings, but all the similar type feelings of the past pile upon  each other to be expressed.

So, instead of being mildly put out, I am outraged.

Instead of feeling a bit overlooked, I feel totally neglected.

The wealth of feelings that I have to feel, truly feel like 50 years worth of bottled up negativity...and even joy.  

Overreacting is standard for me...for in the past I under felt.

I never felt all the way through feelings...

And sadly, the more traumatic, the less I ventured in.  Now all feelings feel like tragedies are looming.  Simplistic and typical pulls and pushes of parent and teenage child, feel to me like I am being abused, again.

Feelings stored in me find opportunities to be expressed...so of course it is in relationships that they line up, pushing and shoving to come out.

Separating the old feelings from the new is very tricky.

Letting out and airing the childhood wounds AND not inflicting wounds upon my children is crucial.  The two can't be joined...yet it seems this is where my expressing happens.  I get a voice of expression, but at the wrong time...

When someone labeled feelings "Time travelers"....they were right.

I am saying what I needed to say, but 50 years too late.

How do I now feel them all the way through, without subjecting my children with their expression?  How do you get them to rise to the surface without something/someone prompting them?  Is it possible to get them to rise by myself? Is it possible to feel them, without a label?

In yoga feelings arise without labels....I feel.

In real life feelings are triggered, labeled.  Does it matter?

Am I like a ticking time bomb waiting to explode?  Is yoga the place to defuse that bomb? Writing and acknowledging and knowing is good, but it is when I get an emotional response that the feelings feel felt.

 

Unexpressed fear.

Mothering for certain is where my greatest weaknesses lie, where all my scars seem to congregate and wait for one child to push a button, and all of the unexpressed emotions come charging forward, ready to spill from my mouth.

A few sentences do, a few sharp tones and hitting remarks find their target...before I am able to gain control of myself.  Inside of me then echos and reverberates voices of fear and confusion, feelings of being put upon, used, etc.  My child self rallies forth, elbowing out of the way the mom.

I have, and have had, a very hard time heading into conflict a mom first...leaving behind my scarred child self.  Which leaves me standing there a mom, spewing forth childish words of defense...forgetting I am supposed to be an adult.

By the time I remember to be an adult, the child has made a mess...voiced promises she isn't going to keep, poured feelings of petty indignation and pretty much presented a 'mental' mom.

My adult self then has to clean up and find a solution that restores us both.

As long as my children live here and are under my care, I will have to be on guard.  Just as I don't want my child self creating my nutrition plan, I don't want my scarred child mothering.  

She mothers out of fear, screams in fear of injustice, fails to see both sides is very much shallow and self absorbed...contents of an abusive mother.

Knowing she exists inside of me, isn't enough to keep her silent...to keep her back and away from conflict.

I wonder what triggers her most?  What are the tones that ring for her to enter into my world uninvited.

They are feelings...feelings of being used.  Feelings of imbalance. Feelings that others should or should not be doing that which they are doing...so when I feel out of control, she rushes forth.

Guess that is what they mean by Post Traumatic moments.

Ugh.  I just get so drained being a mom sometimes.  Working to not become postal, and yet time and time I do.  Each time I climb to the upper rung by putting them down, I lose.

Certainly, they are not the long raging moments of before, just small aftershock like spews.  Is it even possible for me to be in conflict while in control?  I get there, but not till after I have had my ugly say.

Ugly say has to be like sweet treats, something that my scarred girl lives upon...being mute in the first few moments of any conflict will help and open up space for my adult self to arrive.

Today, I quilted...lots.  Thankfully so.  Imagine if all I had to do was to monitor the folks who lived with me???  My child self would have a field day.

Maybe one day I will match the lady of my quilts.  Be a lady at all times...in conflict and without.

Doing Bikram yoga in the Sunrise.... (perhaps doing more yoga will release the unexpressed emotions.)

And this is my latest Kayak Lady...

Art Therapy...it allows me a place to escape from the trauma...a place to express beauty...instead of unexpressed fear.

 

Free will is outside of the Program.

"The structure of the human mind has been likened to a computer in that the mind's basic structure is akin to the hardware and its content to the software.  The mind has limited control over the content of the programming; thus, the human is simultaneously accountable and responsible yet innocent."  David Hawkins.

"The mind has limited control over the content of the programming"...Most of us fail to understand the power of the program that is running inside of our heads.  How it sees for us and has us living a life from its base and that we have very very little free will.

Our free will is all within the program, but you do not have a choice outside of what is offered there.  It isn't even possible to consider a choice that the program doesn't have.  Our limits are our parents limits.  It is near impossible to reach beyond the confines while in the confines.  The program has a list to choose from, a limited list, we can only select from the list.

What I believe happened to me, is that my whole program crashed.  I for some reason was able to see the program and then reality.  And how the two did not match.  It is a rare opportunity to see outside of the program.

My 'mental breakdown' was actually falling out of the program.

I was the computer and could see the program....instead of believing the program was me.  

How I was able to see the truth outside of the program, I can't know, or how that happened, but it did...And I believed IT over the long running program.

Once you see that the mind/program can be wrong, you lose faith in your head.

My head had stories that didn't match reality.  My head had definitions that didn't match reality.  I saw and felt and experienced first hand how out of sync my mind was with reality.  

Once you know you have a defunct operating system running your life, you are aware you have a program operating.  

My 'natural' reflexes were actual reflexes of the program...but not of truth.

The program seemed to be built to ward off the truth and reality instead of walking hand in hand with it.  And my life was built upon the program and not of my truth or the truth alone.

For seven years now I have been finding threads of the program, beliefs and thoughts that eclipse my spirit.  

When the program is running a part of my life, I feel out of control now, and am.  The program is driving me and I follow.

Hard to articulate this to folks who have never, not once stepped out of their program, it makes perfect sense to me since I experienced first hand how off the mark it was.

I had believed that I was a program and that the program was of high morals and values, to come and find out it was filled with abuse and lies.

While it was extremely difficult to see the program in its fully glory, it was the only thing that would have gotten me out.  I am not sure if there was one thread of truth within the whole thing, for if I had the correct word, I had the wrong definition.  Or the right definition but had it placed upon the wrong person or relationship.  There always seemed to be one thing that made the whole thing wrong.

Very interesting to investigate your self, your program and place it facing the truth to see where you and reality match.

It seems to me, that unless something huge happens in reality that our program can't handle, we will get left idling along behind the program, content that it is spot on.

Perhaps restless now and again, or a bit resentful, but not with enough volume to send us completely out.  Life's little bumps are something that the program can handle.  

We can live with mild to moderate stress with spikes of rage and not get tossed out of the program.  The moments of great tragedy or crisis are the situations that are set up to toss you out...

I can't know what those are or what programs are running, but what I can seem to tell is where you are compared to reality.

I can see the justifiable lies of the program, you call you.

In dysfunctional homes, the justifiable lies are what holds the family together.  Its the glue and the rose colored glasses that keeps you from leaving.

It isn't the truth of there being love and kindness there, but the lies that it is there.  And while under the power of the program, you can't tell truth from fiction.

The program is living your life...and calling it a loving family.

I see folks asleep behind the program...living life unaware;  Not being aware they are accountable and responsible for choices they are making within the program...for there is no part of them that can reach for a new choice outside of the program..that choice is unavailable to them.

Free will isn't a choice that they have to pick from.

Free will is outside of the program.

 

 

 

 

Be a Surprise

"I know that over the years, through fear and expectation, my mind has gathered and hoarded places I needed to go, things I needed to have, selves I needed to be.  But here I am, without most of them - the goals and wants all used up in learning how to love."

"So, try as I do to imagine and construct where I am headed, try as I will to plan and know what this life of feeling means, it is the pulse of what I feel itself that lifts me into spirit.  In truth, wings don't grow any differently to fit south or east or west, and our lives,  no matter how we train ourselves are more fundamental than any direction of worldly ambition.  We, like birds, are meant to fly and sing - that's all - and all our plans and schemes are twigs of nest that, once outgrown we leave."  Mark Nepo

What I took away from today's reading, is that no matter what we think we need to be doing or where we think we should be, all we can do is live where we are right now and do so fully being with what is.

It matters not if you have goals or destinations, in order to get there you live.

You live whether you have lofty goals or not, whether you have intelligent wants, or righteous destinations.  You live.  

For me the more I concentrated on goals or end games, the less I lived right now, for I was living for a certain outcome. Bypassing this day, focusing on the one over there.

Now I just live and an outcome happens.  Often times a surprise destination appears.

It seems rather careless in a world that wants you to keep in mind your destination and to groom your life to assure you end up where you planned on going...to NOT plan, but live.

In my past, this moment in time was just something to overlook, for my mind was focused on the goal....tomorrow, when, and If.

When you live staring at the horizon, you miss what is right here, right now.

The sights, the smells, the sounds, the people...all the opportunities to be alive and engaged in living.

It truly doesn't matter where we end up, for there are so many days and hours to live before we get there.  Some how we feel that  when we get there life will begin, when in actuality, living in this day is to live.

Living in this day has to matter more than any lofty goal in mind.

If you can't fully live this day, you are wasting days waiting for the goal to appear.

We somehow have been sold a bill of goods called, goals, dreams etc...that steal our attention from living today.

Maybe it is when your future starts to shrink, that you can see how fruitless it was.  

What good is a goal if all the days leading up to it your not living, but counting the days till you arrive.  Imagine all the days spent and passed by, giving up for this goal.  It is like the goal has stolen your everyday life.

Living without staring at goals or focusing on a certain outcome, will allow you to live and breathe better in this day.

Imagine how you could live today, IF it didn't have to be a step towards a goal.

You could be careless and things wouldn't matter if they fit into the 'plan'.

You could be a live living work of art...where you truly don't know how you will end up when you get 'there'.  Live without a firmly painted goal or pictured outcome.

Live... allowing the ending to be a surprise.  

 

 

 

 

In Control Within the Flow

Today's reading, March 21,in the Book of Awakening, by Mark Nepo "To Harbor and Release"  I love this one.

"Often the pain of resisting makes us rust like iron, and in order to re-enter the flow of life, we need to be scraped back to our original surface.  Our feelings, if not released, bread the heart with their grit. Like windows filmed by weather, we wait on loving hands to be rubbed clear.  It is inevitable.  Experience covers us over, and the expressive journey lets us come clean to the table of light. Again."

"All things in existence participate in this involuntary cycle.  For human beings, the process of living stains us repeatedly with the grit of being here, with heartache and disappointment and the pointedness of being human, which can sicken us if harbored or make us whole if released.  Again and again, we, more than any other life form, have this majestic and burdensome power to harbor or release the impact of our experience."

"Humbly, we are asked to keep the flow real between what is taken in and what is let out.  We have only to breathe to remember our place as a living inlet.  Experience in, feelings out.  Surprise and challenge in, heartache and joy out.  In a constant tide, life rushes in, and in constant release, we must let it all run back off.  For this is how the earth was made magnificent by the sea and how mankind is carved upright, again and again, by the ocean of spirit that sets us free."  Mark Nepo

What we have to remember, what we take in, we have to let out.  I love, "Experience in, Feelings out."  This one sentence alone says so much.

I believe that children who were abused in childhood, learn to experience and not to let the feelings out. We instead try and hold our feelings inside and do so til we explode in various ways.

Rarely are children allowed to express their feelings after being sexually abused or physically abused.  We experience and then we have no outlet.

This alone has created an unnatural way of being human. To take in things in silence our of fear of reprisals, is living half way.  This is how the rust builds upon us. And in my experience, only by expressing what has gone unexpressed, do we clear away the layers of film upon us.

The natural process of Experience in, Feelings out, is disrupted in abuse and this alone is the cause of so much disease and violence...we are out of control, out of order, not able to work correctly.

The term harboring resentment came to mind.  I didn't know that when we don't express our feelings (release them) we are harboring.  

I had truckloads of expressions to release, and in the beginning they flowed like a rushing river, tumbling over each other, with volumes raised, they tore out of me...held back so long their force near violent in the outward flow.

While it had to be shocking and out of character for others to witness this of me, it felt extremely healing to say what I had failed to say...for years.

I wasn't the most prolific or articulate or kind as the words came rushing out, but I was scraping off the rust of old feelings I hadn't felt.  Some were not so pleasant or kind themselves...and all had to be felt in order to be released.

Now, it is my intention to not let layers of unexpressed or unfelt emotions pile up upon myself, for it feels heavy and a burden to carry...so whatever I experience, I let my feelings out...I don't like holding on to feelings.  

Harboring your feelings seems safer when you have been abused...we learn to keep them in order to get along and for sheer survival for some.  

Abuse teaches us to live only taking in...never in a healthy release.

I am still learning how to release.  Sometimes it still comes out very fearful or childlike in expression, but to me...it isn't about the delivery, but rather that they get out.  Maybe over time, with enough space and healing, I will be able to release them with a graceful kind and compassionate delivery...and not the hurried careless abandon that often rushes out.

I will find my natural releasing stance...that isn't totally harboring or rushing abandon...but rather a fearless authenticity, beautiful yet powerful, in control within the flow.